...Present Concerns

A note on this blog

2011-08-18T13:21:00.001-07:00

For quite some time this blog format has not worked for me, so I have not done a lot with the blog lately; nor have I attended to this issue. Finally, though I decided (yes, me who put the "Pro" in "procrastination") to explore various options. I will post updates on this matter.

Do they hate our freedoms?

2011-07-25T21:52:00.004-07:00

G.K. Chesterton, again!

2011-06-20T04:20:00.002-07:00

Gilbert Keith Chesterton died 14 June 1936. I just came across several excellent quotes honoring this great man:

Chesterton is dead! That is to say and
say
Englishry shrunken; death upon a day
was not content with More but took
his heir.
~Robert Farren: ‘Chesterton.’

+ + +
“IT seems to me that Gilbert Chesterton at his baptism was visited by three fairies. Two good and one evil. The two good fairies were the fairy of fecundity of speech and the fairy of wide appreciation. The bad fairy was struck dead as she entered the church---and served her right. He was blessed in knowing nothing of the acerbities which bite into the life of writing men.”
~Hilaire Belloc: ‘Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters.’

+ + +
“HIS mind was oceanic, subject indeed to a certain restriction of repeated phrase and manner, but in no way restricted as to the action of the mind. He swooped upon an idea like an eagle, tore it with active beak into its constituent parts and brought out the heart of it. If ever a man analyzed finally and conclusively Chesterton did so.”
~Hilaire Belloc: ‘Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters.’

+ + +
“WE are in some danger today of underestimating our debt to Mr. Chesterton, of forgetting the impact which his books made on the minds of young men who were infected by the fallacy of Victorian rationalism. In those distant days many people still cherished the futile hope of reconstructing a positive ethical system on the basis of mere negation. Mr. Chesterton’s destructive criticism of the Huxleys, Brandlaughs and Haeckels of our youth was as devastating as it was brilliant, and its value would be more widely appreciated today if it had not been so completely effective.”
~Arnold Lunn: ‘Now I See.’

"Blessed" G.K. Chesterton?

2011-06-15T02:31:00.000-07:00

Interview on Possible Beatification of English Author
By Antonio Gaspari

ROME, JULY 14, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) is well known for his clever and humorous writing, and his thought-provoking paradoxes. But he might also become known as a saint, if a proposal to launch his cause of beatification goes forward.

ZENIT spoke with Paolo Gulisano, author of the first Italian-language biography of the great English writer ("Chesterton & Belloc: Apologia e Profezia," Edizioni Ancora), about the origins of this proposal. Here, Gulisano explains why Chesterton might merit recognition as a saint.

ZENIT: Who is promoting this cause of beatification?

Gulisano: The cultural association dedicated to him, the Chesterton Society, founded in England in 1974 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the great author's birth, with the idea of spreading awareness of the work, thought and figure of this extraordinary personality. For years now, there has been talk of a possible cause of beatification, and a few days ago, during an international conference organized in Oxford on "The Holiness of G.K. Chesterton" -- with the participation of the best exponents in the field of Chesterton studies -- it was decided to go ahead with this proposal.

ZENIT: Why a beatification?

Gulisano: Many people feel there is clear evidence of Chesterton's sanctity: Testimonies about him speak of a person of great goodness and humility, a man without enemies, who proposed the faith without compromises but also without confrontation, a defender of Truth and Charity. His greatness is also in the fact that he knew how to present Christianity to a wide public, made up of Christians and secular people. His books, ranging from "Orthodoxy" to "St. Francis of Assisi," from "Father Brown" to "The Ball and the Cross," are brilliant presentations of the Christian faith, witnessed with clarity and valor before the world.

According to the ancient categories of the Church, we could define Chesterton as a "confessor of the faith." He was not just an apologist, but also a type of prophet who glimpsed far ahead of time the dramatic character of modern issues like eugenics. The English Dominican Aidan Nichols sustains that Chesterton should be seen as nothing less than a possible "father of the Church" of the 20th century.

ZENIT: What are his heroic virtues?

Gulisano: Faith, hope and charity: These were Chesterton's fundamental virtues. Moreover, he was innocent, simple, profoundly humble. Though having personally experienced sorrow, he was a chorister of Christian joy. Chesterton's work is a type of medicine for the soul, or better, it can more precisely be defined as an antidote. The writer himself had actually used the metaphor of antidote to define the effect of sanctity on the world: The saint has the objective of being a sign of contradiction and of restoring mental sanity to a world gone crazy.

ZENIT: What is the cultural, literary and moral contribution that Chesterton has left to British society and to Christianity?

Gulisano: When Pope Pius XI was informed of the death of the great writer, he sent a telegram of condolences through his secretary of state, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli. In the telegram, he mourned the loss of a "devout son of the Holy Church, rich defender of the gifts of the Catholic faith." This was the second time in history that a Pontiff would attribute the title "defender of the faith" to an Englishman. Perhaps the secretary of state did not realize the ironic parallelism, which would have sparked in Gilbert one of his proverbial guffaws -- but the other Englishman was Henry VIII, the man who inflicted on the Church in England its gravest and deepest wound. Chesterton tried to again bring England, and also the world, closer to God, the faith, reason.

ZENIT: What is your opinion on all this?

Gulisano: Reading Chesterton, whether his novels or his essays, always leaves the reader with great serenity and a sense of hope, which certainly does not come from an immature and worldly optimistic vision of life -- which in reality couldn't be farther from the thought of Chesterton, who carefully denounced all the aberrations of modernity -- but rather from a Christian conception, the virile strength of the religious experience.

Chesterton's proposal is to take all of reality seriously, beginning with the interior reality of man, and to confidently make use of the intellect, that is to say, of common sense, in its original sanity, purified of every ideological incrustation.

One rarely reads pages that speak of faith, conversion and doctrine that are so clear and incisive, while being free of every sentimental or moralistic excess. This comes from Chesterton's attentive reading of reality; he knew that the most harmful consequence of de-Christianization has not been the grave ethical straying but rather the straying of reason, synthesized in this critique of his: The modern world has suffered a mental fall much greater than the moral one.

Faced to this reality, Chesterton chose Catholicism, and affirms that there are at least 10,000 reasons to justify this choice, every one of them valid and well-founded, but able to be boiled down to one reason: That Catholicism is true. The responsibility and the task of the Church then consist in this: In the courage to believe, in the first place, and therefore to denounce the paths that lead to nothingness or destruction, to a blind wall or a prejudice. An undoubtedly holy work, and the holiness of Gilbert Chesterton, which I hope the Church will recognize, already shines and sparkles before the world.

[Translation by Kathleen Naab]

© Innovative Media, Inc.

Source: http://www.zenit.org/article-26454?l=english

In memory of G.K. Chesterton

2011-06-14T22:54:00.005-07:00

Homily given by Monsignor Ronald Knox at the Requiem Mass for Gilbert Keith Chesterton on June 27, 1936. (Chesterton died June 14, 1936)

Blessed are they that saw thee, and were honoured by thy friendship. For we live only in our life, but after death our name shall not be such (Ecclesiasticus 48:11).

THE man whom we laid to rest the other day in the cemetery at Beaconsfield was one of the very greatest men of his time. If posterity neglects him, it will pronounce judgment not upon him, but upon itself. He will almost certainly be remembered as a great and solitary figure in literature, an artist in words and in ideas with an astounding fecundity of imaginative vision. He will almost certainly be remembered as a prophet, in an age of false prophets. He warned us, in spacious times, that human liberties were threatened, and to-day, human liberties are in debate. He warned us, in times of prosperity, against the perils of industrialism, and industrialism is labouring for breath. He warned us, when imperialism was a fashion, that nationalism was a force not easily destroyed; today nationalism is the shadow over men's hearts.

Whether he was a great author, whether he was a true prophet, does not concern him now-he lies deaf to the world's praise, and secure from its catastrophes-nor does it concern us here; we are met, as Christians, to say farewell in our own fashion to a fellow-Christian who has outstripped us in the race for eternity. The most important thing about Chesterton (he would have been the first to say it), the most distinctive quality in Chester- ton, was a quality which he shared with some three hundred millions of his fellow-men; he was a Catholic. The public discovered him in the early years of the century; it was not till twenty years later that he discovered himself. There is a legend, told of his absentmindedness, that he once telegraphed home the words, "Am in Liverpool; where ought I to be?" And it took him fourteen years after the publication of his book 0rthodoxy to find out that he ought to be in Rome.

I hope I do not wrong such a man, in preaching his panegyric, when I confine myself to considering the position which belongs to him as a religious force: what Catholicism meant to him, and what he meant to Catholicism. In the case of a meaner man, we should be content to celebrate his domestic virtues, his inconspicuous acts of charity. But Chesterton moved, though with the personal simplicity of a child, in a world of apocalyptic images; he saw his religion everywhere; it mattered furiously to him. What he did, is in God's hands; what he was, is matter of gracious recollection to his friends; it is the effect which he made on the world that claims the world's attention, and its gratitude.

I would speak first of the influence which Chesterton's earlier works had, on young men for the most part, and on Protestants. And it is the only claim I have to stand here, in the place of older and closer friends, that at the time when his earlier works were published I was myself a young man, and a Protestant. I think it is true to say that the generation which grew up between the turn of the century and the Great War had a tendency, all the time, to react in favour of religious orthodoxy. The triumph of evolutionary materialism had seemed complete; the faith of Englishmen was laid out for burial, with the cynics, the pessimists, the positivists driving the last nails in its coffin. There was a reaction, of which we should hear more if the events which began with 1914 had not decimated it, and left its less characteristic specimens to represent it. I do not wish to discount the influence of other religious leaders, Anglicans like Scott Holland, or Catholics like Hugh Benson. But the spear-head of that reaction was a man so plainly on the side of the angels that you did not stop to enquire whether he were an Anglican or a Catholic, G.K. Chesterton. The brilliance of his work, the wideness of his appeal, set the fashion in favour of a religious attitude which the fashion of an earlier age had derided. He was conscious, himself, of that change of atmosphere when he wrote the introduction to his book, The Man Who Was Thursday. It is an extraordinary book, written as if the publisher had commissioned him to write something rather like the Pilgrim's Progress in the style of the Pickwick Papers. And the poem which introduces it is a song, not of triumph, but of release from tension in the middle of a conflict.

But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms;
God and the good Republic came riding back in arms;
We have seen the city of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved
Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind believed.

The direct effect of that reaction, in stemming the tide of religious liberalism, has been in great part obliterated by the War. Its indirect effect, in producing conversions to the Catholic faith, made itself fully felt only during the War, when the annual figure of conversions went up from eight thousand to ten, and from ten to twelve, where it has remained ever since. Meanwhile, the prophet who had acted as a signpost for us, directing us to the true destination of the soul, remained himself outside the Church, content to fight a lonely battle for the philosophy he could see was right, but could not see was ours. What changed him, then, four years after the Armistice? What was the new momentum which lent impetus to his thoughts so that he no longer believed, being blind, but saw? I never yet knew a convert who could give a precise answer to that question. To give a precise answer, we should have to understand, as we shall never understand it here, the economy of God's grace. We can only say that if it were possible to deserve the grace of conversion, Chesterton had deserved it for years as no other man did; and if he had to wait so long for it, there is hope in that for many a waiting soul, perhaps for some waiting soul here, which still cannot see the end to its despairs.

Meanwhile, what had happened was, to Chesterton himself, admirably clear. He had the artist's eye, which could suddenly see, in some quite familiar object, a new value; he had the poet's intuition, which could suddenly detect, in the tritest of phrases, a wealth of new meaning and of possibilities. The most salient quality, I think, of his writing is this gift of illuminating the ordinary; of finding in something trivial a type of the eternal. And it was a gift of vision he himself valued. In the first of his books which really made a name for him, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, the story opens at a moment when a Government clerk, walking behind two friends in town coats, suddenly sees the buttons on their coats as two eyes, the slit underneath as a nose-line; he has a vision of his two friends as two dragons walking backwards away from him. There is a law (he says in that connection) written in the darkest of the books of life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.

That was what happened, when Chesterton was converted. He had looked for the thousandth time at the Catholic Faith, and for the first time, he saw it. Nothing in the Church was new to him, and yet everything was new to him; he was like the man in his own story who had wandered round the world in order to see, with fresh eyes, his own home. That it was his home, neither friend nor foe had doubted; men did not even dare to whisper of him, the old, pathetic lie that converts are unhappy. Whether his work as a Catholic has been as influential as the work he did when he was only a defender of Catholics, is a question hard to resolve. He was no longer the latest fashion; he had reached the age at which most men have said their say; his health had begun to decline, and he was overworked, partly through our fault. Nor, I think, will the world ever give a just hearing to one who has labeled himself a Catholic. But this I will say, that if every other line he wrote should disappear from circulation, Catholic posterity would still owe an imperishable debt of gratitude, so long as a copy of The Everlasting Man enriched its libraries. This I will say, that whenever I ask an enquirer whether he has read any Catholic books, his answer regularly begins, "I've read some Chesterton, of course."

We live only in our life, and after death our name shall not be such; few men of our time could refuse that epitaph to Gilbert Chesterton. Meanwhile, blessed are they that saw him, and were honoured by his friendship; they found in him a living example of charity, of chivalry, of unbelievable humility which will remain with them, perhaps, as a more effective document of Catholic verity than any word even he wrote. But the familiar voice, with its high chuckle of amusement, will reach us no longer; he, whose belief in immortality was so publicly influential, can give us no whisper of reassurance, now that he knows. Only, we know what he would say if he heard the suggestion that nothing remains of him beyond what was interred at Beaconsfield.

The sagas have a hundred maps to give;
They trace their crawling cosmos like a tree;
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free;
And all these things are less than dust to me,
Because my name is Lazarus, and I live.

+ + +
-from The Chesterton Review, 1990.

Chesterton page by Church of St. Teresa, Beconsfield, UK.

The Heavy Cost of the Bush-Obama Murder Rampage

2011-06-01T00:13:00.001-07:00

By Anthony Gregory
June 1, 2011

IN EVERY election cycle, the politicians love to pretend there is a difference among them on the foreign policy questions. Yet on these issues of unsurpassed importance, we see the Democrats and Republicans are all part of the same bloodthirsty gang.

On the superficial level of presidential politics, Obama and Bush appeared light-years apart. They play opposites in the DC-approved official culture war between those who pretend to be genuine red-blooded Americans of the heartland and those who feign an understanding of the beleaguered urban minorities and oppressed underclass, when in truth both perfectly embody the same Wall Street-Pentagon-friendly power elite. This is most clearly seen in their virtually identical approach toward empire.

After 9/11, Bush could have used his Republican bonafides to stress not pacifism but at least the humble foreign policy he had promised. We shouldn’t be "an arrogant nation," he famously said in his October 11, 2000, debate with Al Gore. "[O]ne way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, we do it this way, so should you."

But instead, Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to expand the federal government more than had happened in decades, gut the Bill of Rights, and start two major wars to "democractize" Afghanistan and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands, maybe more than a million innocents, were slaughtered in his wars. He left America in low morale, bankrupted from his recklessness, bloodied from battle, with thousands of Americans having returned in flag-draped caskets.

Obama in 2008 gave even more lip service to foreign policy humility than did Bush in 2000, or at least was perceived this way, and somehow everyone believed it. He said Bush made a terrible mistake in invading Iraq. He said we could save a fortune and restore American honor by withdrawing.

Yet here we are, over two years into his presidency, and the mountain of corpses continues to rise. In Afghanistan, there were more civilian deaths last year than any time since the war began. In Pakistan, Obama has unleashed unspeakable terror with his drone attacks, deploying more than three times as many last year as Bush did in 2008. This killing spree has greatly exacerbated a refugee disaster, wherein a million or two have been displaced from their homes.

But of course, most Americans don’t care about the death of foreigners. Non-Americans are barely human. Yet even by purely U.S.-centric standards, the Obama model of war has amounted to a continuation of the Bush trajectory. My new Independent Institute policy report, What Price War? Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Costs of Conflict, goes into the numbers and cuts through the rhetorical fog of partisan nonsense.

Last year, 559 American troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is ninety more than died in Bush’s last full year – 2008 – in office. Both 2009 and 2010 were far bloodier for Americans in Afghanistan than any year under Bush. In 2008, Bush’s deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, 155 died there – fewer than half of the 317 who fell in 2009 and fewer than a third of the 499 who fell last year.
Even conservative Americans should be alarmed by this, and liberal peaceniks should be horrified that their man has apparently increased U.S. belligerence from its 2008 levels, by which point U.S. casualties were winding down from their peak during Bush’s most lethal years. All Americans have to be concerned with the financial cost too. Obama repeatedly promised to save money from the Iraq adventure and devote the savings to other priorities – which he has, more or less. Yet the U.S. was going to begin drawing down in Iraq anyway: Bush signed the Status of Forces Agreement in 2008, setting a timetable for Iraq similar to what we’ve seen followed under Obama.

Overall, the heightened violence in Afghanistan has meant a war price tag rivaling the worst days of war criminal George W. Bush. Even adjusting for inflation, in 2006, Bush was spending about $133 billion on his two wars in 2011 dollars. Last year, the cost was up to $170 billion. Then we have the record-busting Pentagon budgets that the Democrats have given us.

Obama could have gotten away with a more modest policy than Bush, simply by continuing on the path set at the beginning of 2009. But he wanted to show that the Republicans had "neglected" Afghanistan and so he tripled the U.S. troop presence, from just over 30,000 soldiers at the end of the Bush era to the 100,000 or so that are there now. This puts aside the vast increase in contractors, as I discuss in the report.

Obama has also bombed Somalia and Yemen and started a fresh new major war with Libya, in violation of the War Powers Act, the Constitution, and all semblance of common sense. So far, according to Defense Secretary Gates, the cost has been over $750 million. This particular battle costs about $40 million a month in direct costs, but I’m sure the Republicans are still patting themselves on the back for saving $5 million a year by cutting federal funding for NPR.

All of this ignores the more hidden costs of war: The uncounted thousands of innocents blown to bits and otherwise slaughtered because Obama doesn’t want to appear "weak" in Afghanistan; the civil liberties violations that have only accelerated under this president; the many thousands of Americans injured and psychologically traumatized; the economic opportunities vanquished because of the trillions in resources devoted to and destroyed in these wars.

Concerning all the permanent fixtures of the American state – the trillions in entitlements, the national police power, the Fed and the armies of regulators – Obama has continued and expanded upon nearly everything we had under Bush, just as Bush ramped up what he inherited from Clinton and on and on going back decades. Nowhere is the tragic bipartisan continuity in U.S. policy starker than in the area of war. Yet as I note in my paper, there was no reason to expect otherwise: candidate Obama said Iraq was a mistake, but he praised the horrible surge and voted to continue funding the war, vowing the whole time to expand operations in Afghanistan.

Millions thought Obama would bring home the troops, wind down the wars, stop killing so many civilians, and save money while he was at it. Sadly, the murder rampage continues without interruption, only with a greater emphasis on picking on some nations rather than others and a different rhetorical cloak to obscure the evil of the slaughter. Hawks decry Obama as a pacifist who hates American power and doves often praise him for being more thoughtful than his reckless warmongering predecessor. The only real question is which dishonest characterization is the greater obscenity.

Anthony Gregory is research editor at the Independent Institute. He lives in Oakland, California. See his webpage for more articles and personal information.

Population Growth as Propaganda: The Greens and the Reds

2011-05-31T01:43:00.002-07:00

By Gary North
May 31, 2011

BEGINNING in the mid-1960s, a propaganda campaign has been waged against the West. Those favoring government control over the economy have used the fear of a population explosion to persuade voters to allow the governments of the world to interfere with their lives. The Greens have made predictions about famine. These predictions began in 1798 in An Essay on Population, written by T. Robert Malthus. The first edition was published anonymously. His bold prediction of inevitable poverty was dropped in later editions, but people remember the first edition.

We need to know how long this nonsense has been going on. We need to recognize it when we hear it or see it.

THE POPULATION BOMB

Concern over population growth escalated in the 1960s, especially after the counter-culture movement appeared around 1965. A major news magazine in the United States, U.S. News and World Report, announced in 1965: "The World's Biggest Problem." It asked: "How can the world feed all its people, at the rate the population is growing?" This article had been preceded by "World Choice: Limit Population or Face Famine." Even National Review, then the most influential conservative intellectual magazine in the United States, got on the bandwagon in 1965.

In 1968, Dr. Paul Ehrlich's best-selling book, The Population Bomb, was published. In it, Ehrlich, a Stanford University professor of biology, warned: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate. . . ." A far better estimate of the threat of worldwide famine was made in 1969 by Harvard University nutritionist Jean Meyer, who predicted that "food may at some time (20 or 30 years from now) be removed altogether as a limiting factor in population." Meyer's viewpoint received very little publicity, although it was to prove correct within a decade.

The predicted famines did not occur in the 1970s or the 1980s. What did occur was a surplus of food. The apocalyptic critics in 1965 should have paid more attention to the statistics of food production. After 1950, worldwide grain production increased steadily. From 1950 through 1975, this increase was in the range of 25% to 40% per capita. In the less developed countries (excluding Communist China), the increase was in the 13% range. Between 1950 and 1980, the world's supply of arable land grew by more than 20%, and it grew even faster in the less developed countries. From 1967 to 1977, the world's irrigated acreage grew by more than 25%. The price of seed, fertilizer, pesticides, and farm equipment also dropped in this period, in some cases by as much as half. In the 1980's, grain farmers all over the world suffered economic losses as a result of overproduction. While these trends may not be permanent, they did create a tremendous public relations problem for the heralded famine-predictors of the counter-culture era (1965-70).

What also occurred was a dramatic fall of birth rates in undeveloped nations: a contraceptive revolution. In 1979, Ehrlich referred back to his book and others like it that had prophesied rising birth rates in the 1970s: "But we were all dead wrong." He still held that a crisis was coming: perhaps famine, or a pandemic, or nuclear war. In 1980, he made a $1,000 bet with University of Maryland economist Julian Simon over the future price of five metals -- a bet on the limits to growth. Simon predicted that prices would be lower. He proved correct; Ehrlich paid off the bet in 1990. He could easily afford to pay off; in that same year, he was granted a $345,000 MacArthur Foundation Prize and half of the $240,000 Craford Prize, the ecologists' version of the Nobel Prize. Simon was unknown to the general public. The media were overwhelmingly supportive of the apocalyptics. Rival viewpoints on the population question, despite the overwhelming evidence, received little attention from the major opinion-makers. The opinion-makers were strongly opposed to population growth because they were strongly pro-abortion. The apocalyptics seemed to provide scientific evidence for a looming catastrophe. This reinforced the legalization of abortion in 1973 (Roe v. Wade).

In 1942, Warren Thompson warned of the decline in the birth rate in Western Europe and its colonies, 1890-1940. "It is the most important demographic change of our time." This decline in birth rates in the West has generally continued, although in the early 1990s, it was reversed in the United States. By the late 1980s, there was no Western European nation except Ireland with a birth rate anywhere near 2.1 children per family -- the family replacement rate. Had Islamic birth rates been excluded, the birth rate figures would have been much lower in several nations. West Germany's birth rate had fallen so low by the late 1970s that the German population will die out in the year 2500 if the same birth rate is maintained. (There will be plenty of Muslims, especially Turks, to replace them.) By the late 1980s, a new warning was being sounded: European life spans were lengthening, birth rates were dropping, and government retirement programs were facing a looming crisis: too many recipients, too few taxpaying workers. Yet the apocalyptics continue to warn of an impending explosion, a population bomb.

GLOBAL 2000

In 1980, a Presidential Commission reported to the President of the United States on the impending crises. Unlike most reports from Presidential commissions, this three-volume report received worldwide publicity. It was titled, Global 2000 Report to the President, but became known simply as Global 2000. It was a deeply political document. It was also a classic Malthusian document, meaning the 1798 Malthus, not the more mature Malthus. It warned on page 1:

If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically, and more vulnerable to disruption than the world we live in now. Serious stresses involving population, resources, and environment are clearly visible ahead. Despite greater material output, the world's people will be poorer in many ways than they are today.

For hundreds of millions of the desperately poor, the outlook for food and other necessities of life will be no better. For many it will be worse. Barring revolutionary advances in technology, life for most people on earth will be more precarious in 2000 than it is now -- unless the nations of the world act decisively to alter current trends.

Nothing like this happened. Two comments are relevant here. First, there has been no revolutionary technological development, for example, along the lines of nanotechnology, where molecule-sized mechanical assemblers put together atoms and molecules in order to produce organic as well as inorganic substances in almost limitless quantities. This development, if it comes, will at last force a drastic revision of the legacy of Malthus. It looks technologically feasible sometime before the year 2070, but it has not happened yet. Second, "the nations of the world" -- read: national governments -- poured tens of billions of dollars worth of aid into the third world in the 1980's, but in the handful of isolated socialist economies of Africa, things nevertheless grew worse. Outside of these tiny socialist economies, which were also suffering from civil war, the predicted food crises did not take place.

This absence of crises was predicted by a group of scholars in a book published in 1984: The Resourceful Earth. This book received very little attention from the press. Its editors offered another scenario: "If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be less crowded (though more populated), less polluted, more stable ecologically, and less vulnerable to resource-supply disruption than the world we live in now. Stresses involving population, resources, and environment will be less in the future than now . . . The world's people will be richer in most ways than they are today . . . The outlook for food and other necessities of life will be better . . . life for most people on earth will be less precarious economically than it is now." This prediction came true for all but North Korea and Cuba.

The Malthusian apocalyptics in 1980 dismissed as irrelevant two centuries of economic and technological progress: 1780-1980. They also ignored earlier periods of population growth in European history. Economic historian Karl Helleiner writes:

The opinion, still widely held, that before the eighteenth century, Europe's population, though subject to violent short-run fluctuations, remained stationary over long periods, or was growing only imperceptibly, is, I believe, no longer tenable. There is sufficient evidence to indicate that those oscillations were superimposed on clearly recognizable "long waves." At least two periods of secular increase can be tolerably well identified in the demographic history of medieval and early modern Europe, the first extending from about the middle of the eleventh to the end of the thirteenth, the second from the middle of the fifteenth to the end of the sixteenth, century. . . . In this sense the demographic development of the eighteenth century was not unique. What was unprecedented about it was the fact that the secular upward movement started from a higher level, and that it was able to maintain, and for some time even increase, its momentum. Population growth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, unlike that of previous epochs, was not terminated or reversed by catastrophe.

Something changed after 1750. The world experienced what Adam Smith taught in The Wealth of Nations (1776): economic freedom produces rapid, long-term growth.

Economic freedom is necessary but not sufficient to produce long-term population growth. A religious worldview favorable to large families must accompany economic liberty. Men must believe what David wrote so long ago: "As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate" (Ps. 127:4-5). The issue here is world dominion under God. This faith has faded rapidly in the humanist West. With falling birth rates among the populations of the industrialized world, rates of population growth are headed lower. When third-world nations industrialize, they almost certainly -- a very dangerous phrase in demographics -- will experience the same thing. (We must always add: unless people change their minds and then change their behavior.) It has already happened in Iran, whose birth rate is close to Germany's: 1.4 children per woman.

The Malthusians always talk about the burden of more mouths to feed. They never talk about the economic benefits of more hands to work and more minds to think creatively beginning two decades later. They ignore the long-term capital returns from a 15-year or 20-year capital investment in morality and education. That is, they are present-oriented and therefore lower-class social theorists. Sadly, vocal Christian intellectuals in the late twentieth century joined the camp of the Malthusians.

Are many people facing famine today? If so, what is the proper solution? If not, why are so many Western intellectuals convinced that famine is imminent? How could a supposedly serious pair of scholars have written a book in 1967 titled, Famine-1975!? The famine never appeared. Instead, food prices fell. Per capita consumption of food rose. Yet the myth of looming food shortages continues to be believed. From 1798 until the present, Malthus' predictions have been refuted by the facts, decade after decade. The West has experienced a growing population with increasing per capita consumption of food. Yet the myth still flourishes in the West. That starvation is possible in a major war is quite possible. The question is: If we avoid such a major war, is a famine inevitable? The apocalyptics' answer: yes. This answer has been proven incorrect for over two centuries, but generation after generation of apocalyptics learn nothing from the evidence. Theirs is a religious worldview, impervious to the historical record.

Read the rest of the article

Copyright © 2011 Gary North

G.K. Chesterton quotes (1)

2011-05-20T19:07:00.009-07:00

This page contains a variety quotes from G.K. Chesterton. Enjoy!

“IT IS remarkable that in so many great wars it is the defeated who have won. The people who were left worst at the end of the war were generally the people who were left best at the end of the whole business.” ~Tremendous Trifles.

“DEMOCRACY means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.” ~N.Y. Times, Feb. 1, 1931.

“IF THERE is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy.” ~The Everlasting Man.

“THIS world is all one wild divorce court; nevertheless, there are many who still hear in their souls the thunder of the authority of human habit; those whom God hath joined together let no man sunder.” ~What’s Wrong With the World.

“INSTEAD of the liberty of dogma, you have the tyranny of taste.” ~A Miscellany of Men.

“THERE ARE two kinds of people in the world: the conscious dogmatists and unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic.” ~Generally Speaking.

“FOR IT IS the test of a good encyclopedia that it does two rather different things at once. The man consulting it finds the thing he wants; he also finds how many thousand things there are that he does not want.” ~The Common Man.

“THE FUNDAMENTALISTS are funny enough, and the funniest thing about them is their name. For, whatever else the fundamentalist is, he is not fundamental. He is content with the bare letter of Scripture—the translation of a translation, coming down to him by the tradition of a tradition—without venturing to ask for its original authority.” ~All is Grist.

“THERE IS no such thing as being a gentleman at important moments; it is at unimportant moments that a man is a gentleman. At important moments he ought to be something better.” ~A Handful of Authors.

“WHATEVER else there was, there was never any such thing as the evolution of the idea of God. The idea was concealed, was avoided, was almost forgotten, was even explained away; but it was never evolved.”
~The Everlasting Man.

“TO BE merely modern is to condemn oneself to an ultimate narrowness; just as to spend one’s last earthly money on the newest hat is to condemn oneself to the old-fashioned. The road of the ancient centuries is strewn with dead moderns.” ~The Common Man.

THE CHRISTIAN admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the Materialist's world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The Materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts. ~Orthodoxy.

"THE WHOLE modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." ~Illustrated London News (04-19-1924)

“I AM very fond of revolutionists, but not very fond of nihilists. For nihilists, as their name implies, have nothing to revolt about.” ~The Thing.

“PEOPLE put the matter wrong when they say that the novel is a study of human nature. Human nature is a thing that even men can understand. Human nature is born of the pain of a woman; human nature plays at peep-bo when it is two and at cricket when it is twelve; human nature earns its living and desires the other sex and dies. What the novel deals with is what women have to deal with; the differentiations, the twists and turns of this eternal river.” ~The Victorian Age in Literature.

“A GOOD novelist always has a philosophy; but a good novel is never a book of philosophy.” ~A Handful of Authors.

“IT SEEMS seems to me that Gilbert Chesterton at his baptism was visited by three fairies. Two good and one evil. The two good fairies were the fairy of fecundity of speech and the fairy of wide appreciation. The bad fairy was struck dead as she entered the church---and served her right. He was blessed in knowing nothing of the acerbities which bite into the life of writing men.” ~Hilaire Belloc: Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters.

“THE FULL value of this life can only be gotten by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we have accepted everything we have missed something—war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very miserable truce.” ~GKC: Charles Dickens.

"THE SAME lesson [of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker] was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw." ~Heretics.

"OSCAR WILDE said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde." ~Orthodoxy.

When H.G. Wells was seriously ill, he wrote Chesterton and said, "If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you." --- Chesterton replied, "If I turn out to be right, you will triumph, not by being a friend of mine, but by being a friend of Man, by having done a thousand things for men like me in every way from imagination to criticism. The thought of the vast variety of that work, and how it ranges from towering visions to tiny pricks of humor, overwhelmed me suddenly in retrospect; and I felt we have none of us ever said enough. . .Yours always, G. K. Chesterton."

(Note: Gilbert was a large man, 6' 4" and weighing 290 lb).
On one occasion, Chesterton remarked to his visiting friend, George Bernard Shaw: "To look at you, anyone would think a famine had struck England". Shaw retorted, "To look at you, anyone would think you have caused it".

“IT IS easy enough to say the cultured man should be the crowd’s guide, philosopher and friend. Unfortunately, he has nearly always been a misguiding guide, a false friend and a very shallow philosopher. And the actual catastrophes we have suffered, including those we are now suffering, have not in historical fact been due to the prosaic practical people who are supposed to know nothing, but almost invariably to the highly theoretical people who knew they knew everything. The world may learn by its mistakes; but they were mostly the mistakes of the learned.” ~The Common Man.

Mother's Day Proclamation

2011-05-08T16:55:00.001-07:00

The antiwar roots of Mother's Day may not be well-known, yet it is an important piece of history bearing a valuable lesson. Julia Ward Howe (1819 – 1910) was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet, most famous as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". After the war, Howe focused her activities on the causes of pacifism and women's suffrage. In 1870 Howe was the first to proclaim Mother's Day, with her "Mother's Day Proclamation". Written in 1870, Howe's "Mother's Day Proclamation" was a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. The Proclamation was tied to Howe's feminist belief that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level.

Mother's Day Proclamation

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

The Criminality of War

2011-05-01T04:18:00.010-07:00

By Laurence M. Vance
Source: LewRockwell.com

Even without the WikiLeaks revelations that U.S. helicopter pilots gunned down twelve Iraqi civilians, that U.S. soldiers ignored brutal torture carried out by Iraqi security forces, that the U.S. military withheld from the public information about 15,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, that U.S. special forces have been secretly embedded with Pakistani military, that the U.S. government massacred children and was complicit in the Yemeni government taking the blame for the deed, and that U.S. troops carelessly killed civilians and then covered it up, there were numerous criminal acts perpetrated by the United States military under the guise of the war on terror.

Here are just a few representative examples:

-- Members of Stryker Combat Brigade in Afghanistan Accused of Killing Civilians for Sport
According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.

-- Afghanistan Wedding Party Hit by Massive Bomb
At least 21 people were killed last night and 83 wounded after a massive bomb ripped through a wedding party in a village in Kandahar where US special forces have pioneered a controversial militia programme to encourage people to defend themselves in return for development projects.

-- US Troops "Murdered Afghan Civilians and Kept Body Parts"
A group of US soldiers murdered a number of Afghan civilians and took body parts as trophies, documents released by military officials allege.

-- U.S. Soldiers Charged with Murdering Civilians in Afghanistan War
A dozen US soldiers have been charged with a series of crimes committed in Afghanistan, including the murder of three Afghan civilians and the subsequent cover-up, according to documents the US Army released Wednesday. CNN reports that the soldiers from the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division out of Washington state have been charged in connection with the attempted cover-up of the murder and assault of Afghan civilians, as well as the mutilation of dead Afghans, and drug use.

-- Troops Carrying Out "Battlefield Executions" in Afghanistan, Seymour Hersh Says
What they’ve done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban. You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately. And if you cannot conclude they’re Taliban, you must turn them free. What it means is, and I’ve been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place. Well, if they can’t prove they’re Taliban, bam. If we don’t do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying. And that's going on now.

-- US Special Forces "Tried to Cover-up" Botched Khataba Raid in Afghanistan
US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.

-- Cluster Bombs, Decapitation Bombing Killed Hundreds
Hundreds of civilians were killed by Coalition cluster bombs and air strikes designed to decapitate the Iraqi leadership, according to a new report by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), which said the high cost in civilian casualties caused by the two tactics may have violated the laws of war.

-- US Army "Kill Team" in Afghanistan Posed for Photos of Murdered Civilians
Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.

According to American and Pakistani sources, U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan kill ten civilians for every "militant" killed. And according to U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, of the more than thirty people who have been killed and the eighty who have been wounded in convoy and checkpoint shootings in Afghanistan since the summer of 2009, not one was found to have been a threat: "We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat," said the general.

But as bad as these war crimes are, it should never be forgotten that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are themselves criminal. It doesn’t matter if these crimes were carried out by a few bad apples or rogue outfits, or if they are merely isolated instances or if a majority of U.S. soldiers did not participate. The danger in focusing on the above war crimes – and even terming them crimes – masks the real crime that has been perpetrated against Iraq and Afghanistan.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the destruction of infrastructure in countries that were not a threat to the United States, and the killing and wounding of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans who hadn’t lifted a finger against any Americans until their countries were targeted by the United States is the real crime.

These wars are crimes against not only the Iraq and Afghan peoples, but against the thousands of U.S. soldiers who died in vain and for a lie, against the thousands of U.S. soldiers who needlessly suffered horrific injuries that were not worth it, against the thousands of family members of U.S. soldiers who must unnecessarily endure mental anguish over lost loved ones, and against the American taxpayers who are on the hook for trillions of dollars.

And yet, conservatives gave one of the chief war criminals, Donald Rumsfeld, the "Defender of the Constitution Award" at their annual CPAC. Fittingly, the award was presented by another one of the chief war criminals, Dick Cheney. I stand by what I have said several times about conservatives: The very heart and soul of conservatism is war. Patriotism, Americanism, and being a real conservative are now equated with support for war, torture, and militarism.

It is unfortunate that many conservative Christians are also conservative warmongers. To them I offer, and to all other conservative warmongers, the compelling insight of Howard Malcom (1799-1879), former president of Georgetown College, Kentucky. What it especially important about Malcom’s treatise on the "Criminality of War" is that it was reprinted in The Book of Peace: A Collection of Essays on War and Peace – published by the American Peace Society in 1845, long before the horrors of twentieth-century wars were chronicled, and even before images of war were captured on photographs.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

CRIMINALITY OF WAR
By Howard Malcom, D. D.
President of Georgetown College, KY

That man is a fallen and depraved creature, is every where apparent in the ferocious dispositions of his nature. Hence, to speak of him as in "a state of nature," has been to speak of him as "a savage." A savage finds in war and bloodshed his only means of honor and fame, and he becomes, both in the chase and the camp, a beast of prey.

In proportion as war prevails among civilized nations, it banishes whatever tends to refine and elevate, suspends the pursuits of industry, destroys the works of art, and sets them back towards barbarism. Wherever it comes, cities smoke in ruins, and fields are trodden under foot. The husband is torn from his wife, the father from his children, the aged lose their prop, and woman is consigned to unwonted toils and perpetual alarms. As it passes, the halls of science grow lonely, improvements pause, benevolence is fettered, violence supersedes law, and even the sanctuary of God is deserted, or becomes a manger, a hospital, or a fortress. In its actual encounters, every movement is immeasurably horrid, with wounds, anguish, and death; while amid the din of wrath and strife, a stream of immortal souls is hurried, unprepared, to their final audit.

That tyrants should lead men into wars of pride and conquest, is not strange. But that the people, in governments comparatively free, should so readily lend themselves to a business in which they bear all the sufferings, can gain nothing, and may lose all, is matter of astonishment indeed.

But the chief wonder is that CHRISTIANS, followers of the Prince of Peace, should have concurred in this mad idolatry of strife, and thus been inconsistent not only with themselves, but with the very genius of their system. Behold a man going from the Lord’s Supper, fantastically robed and plumed, drilling himself into skilful modes of butchery, and studying the tactics of death! Behold him murdering his fellow Christians, and praying to his Divine Master for success in the endeavor! Behold processions marching to the house of God to celebrate bloody victories, and give thanks for having been able to send thousands and tens of thousands to their last account with all their sins upon their heads! Stupendous inconsistency!

Surely this matter should remain no longer unexamined. It cannot. In this age of light, when every form of vice and error is discussed and resisted, this great evil, the prolific parent of unnumbered abominations, must be attacked also. Christians are waking up to see and do their duty to one another, to their neighbors, and to the distant heathen. They cannot continue to overlook war. I persuade myself that there are few, even now, who object to its being discussed.

I propose not to discuss the whole subject of war; – a vast theme. I shall abstain from presenting it in the light of philosophy, politics, or patriotism; in each of which points of light I have studied it, and feel that it demands most serious attention. In the following observations, war will be discussed only as it concerns a Christian.

Happily, there are few who would oppose the prevalence and perpetuity of peace. The need of discussion lies not in the bloodthirsty character of our countrymen, nor in the existence of active efforts to propagate and prolong the miseries of war; but in the apathy that prevails on this subject, and the almost total want of reflection in regard to it. A military spirit is so wrought into the habits of national thinking, and into all our patriotic pomps and festivals, that the occasional occurrence of war is deemed a matter of course. Even the fervent friends of man’s highest welfare seem to regard a general pacification of the world, and the disuse of fleets and armies, as a mere Utopian scheme, and chose to give their money and prayers to objects which seem of more probable attainment. This apathy and incredulity are to be overcome only by discussion.

The following observations will be confined to two points.

I. War is criminal because inconsistent with Christianity.

II. This criminality is enormous.

I. ITS INCONSISTENCY WITH CHRISTIANITY.

1. It contradicts the entire genius and intention of Christianity.

Christianity requires us to seek to amend the condition of man. War always deteriorates and destroys. The world is at this moment not one whit better, in any respect, for all the wars of five thousand years. If here and there some good may be traced to war, the amount of evil, on the whole, is immeasurably greater. Christianity, if it prevailed, would make earth once more a paradise. War makes it a slaughter house, a desert, a den of thieves and murderers, a hell. Christianity cancels and condemns the law of retaliation. War is based upon that very principle. Christianity remedies all human woes. War makes them.

The causes of war are as inconsistent with Christianity as its effects. It originates in the worst passions, and the worst crimes, James iv., 1, 2. We may always trace it to the thirst of revenge, the acquisition of territory, the monopoly of commerce, the quarrels of kings, the coercion of religious opinions, or some such unholy source. There never was a war, devised by man, founded on holy tempers, and Christian principles.

All the features, all the concomitants, all the results of war, are opposed to the features, the concomitants, the results of Christianity. The two systems conflict in every point, irreconcilably and forever.

2. War sets at naught the entire example of Jesus.

"Learn of me," says the Divine Examplar. And can we learn fighting from him? His conduct was always pacific. He became invisible when the Nazarites sought to cast him from their precipice. The troops that came to arrest him in the garden, he struck down, but not dead. His constant declaration was, that he "came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save."

True, he once instructed his disciples to buy swords, telling them that they were going forth as sheep among wolves. But the whole passage shows he was speaking by parable, as he generally did. The disciples answered, "here are two swords." He instantly replies, "it is enough." If he had spoken literally, how could two swords suffice for twelve Apostles? Nay, when Peter used one of these, it was too much. Christ reproved him, and healed the wound. He rneant to teach them their danger, not their refuge. His metaphor was misunderstood, just as it was when he said, "beware of the leaven of the Pharisees," and they thought he meant bread.

Once he drove men from the temple. But it was with "a whip of small cords." Moral influence drove them. A crowd of such fellows was not to be overcome by one man with a whip. He expressly declared that his servants should not fight, for his kingdom was not of this world. His whole life was the sublime personification of benevolence. He was the PRINCE OF PEACE.

Do we forget that Christ is our example? Whatever is right for us to do, would in general have been right for him to do. Imagine the Savior robed in the trappings of a man of blood, leading columns to slaughter, setting fire to cities, laying waste the country, storming fortresses, and consigning thousands to wounds, anguish and death, just to define a boundary, settle a point of policy, or decide some kingly quarrel. Could "meekness and lowliness of heart" be learned from him thus engaged?

There is no rank or station in an army that would become the character of Christ. Nor can any man who makes arms a profession find a pattern in Christ our Lord. But he ought to be every man’s pattern.

I need not enlarge on this point. It is conceded; for no warrior thinks of making Christ his pattern. How then can a genuine imitator of Christ, consistently be a warrior?

3. War is inconsistent not only with the NATURE of Christianity, and the EXAMPLE OF JESUS, but it violates all the EXPRESS PRECEPTS of Scripture.

Even the Old Testament does not sanction war as a Custom. In each case, there mentioned, of lawful war, it was entered upon by the express command of God. If such authority were now given, we might worthily resort to arms. But without such authority, how dare we violate the genius of Christianity, and set at naught the example of Christ? The wars mentioned in olden times were not appointed to decide doubtful questions, or to settle quarrels. They were to inflict national punishment, and were intended, as are pestilence and famine, to chastise guilty nations.

As to the New Testament, a multitude of its precepts might be quoted, expressly against all fighting. "Ye have heard, &c., an eye for an eye, but I say unto you resist not evil." "Follow peace with all men." "Love one another." "Do justice, love mercy." "Love your enemies." "Follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace." "Return good for evil." "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, and ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you." "If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight," etc. "If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither," &c. "Be ye not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." "If thine enemy hunger, feed him, if he thirst, give him drink." "Render not evil for evil, but contrariwise blessing." Such passages might be indefinitely multiplied. They abound in the New Testament. How shall they be disposed of? No interpretation can nullify their force, or change their application. Take any sense the words will bear, and they forbid war. They especially forbid retaliation, which is always advanced as the best pretext for war.

Such texts as have been just quoted, relate to the single matter of retaliation and fighting. But belligerent nations violate every precept of the gospel. It enjoins every man to be meek, lowly, peaceable, easy to be entreated, gentle, thinking no evil, merciful, slow to anger, quiet, studious, patient, temperate, &c. Let a man rehearse, one by one, the whole catalogue of Christian graces, and he will see that war repudiates them all.

Examine that superlative epitome of Christianity, our Lord’s sermon on the mount. Its nine benedictions are upon so many classes of persons; the poor in spirit, mourners, the meek, the merciful, the peace-makers, the persecuted, the reviled, those who hunger after righteousness, and the pure in heart. In which of these classes can the professed warrior place himself? Alas, he shuts himself out from all the benedictions of heaven.

The discourse proceeds to teach, not only killing, but anger is murder. It expressly rebukes the law of retaliation; and exploding the traditionary rule of loving our neighbor, and hating our enemy, it requires us to love our enemies, and do good to those that despitefully use us. Afterward, in presenting a form of prayer, it not only teaches us to say, "Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us," but adds, "If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive you." What a peace sermon is here! What modern peace society goes further, or could be more explicit?

But let us take a few of the Christian graces more in detail. The Christian is required to cherish a sense of direct and supreme responsibility to God. The irresponsible feelings of a soldier are a necessary part of his profession, as Lord Wellington said recently, ‘A man who has a nice sense of religion, should not be a soldier.’ The soldier makes war a profession, and must be ready to fight any nation, or any part of his own nation, as he is ordered. He must have no mind of his own. He must march, wheel, load, fire, charge, or retreat, as he is bidden, and because he is bidden. In the language of THOMAS JEFFERSON, "The breaking of men to military discipline, is breaking their spirits to principles of passive obedience." The nearer a soldier comes to a mere machine, the better soldier he makes. Is this right for a Christian? Is it compatible with his duty to "examine all things, and hold fast that which is good?"

The contempt of life which is so necessary in a soldier, is a sin. He must walk up to the deadly breach, and maintain ground before the cannon’s mouth. But life is inestimable, and belongs to God. He who masters the fear of death, does it either by religious influence, or quenching the fear of God, and all concern about a future state. There is not a gospel precept, which he who makes arms a profession, is not at times compelled to violate.

Nor is there a Christian grace which does not tend to diminish the value of a professed soldier. Some graces are, it is true, useful in camp; where a man may be called to act as a servant, or laborer. It is then desirable that he be honest, meek, faithful, that he may properly attend to a horse, or a wardrobe. But such qualities spoil him for the field. He must there cast away meekness, and fight; he must cast away honesty, and forage; he must cast away forgiveness, and revenge his country; he must not return good for evil, but two blows for one.

Survey an army prepared for battle; see a throng, busy with cannons, muskets, mortars, swords, drums, trumpets, and banners. Do these men look like Christians? Do they talk like followers of the meek and lowly Jesus? Do they act like friends and benefactors of the whole human race? Are the lessons they learn in daily drill, such as will help them in a life of faith?

Mark this army in the hour of battle. See attacks and retreats, battalions annihilated, commanders falling, shouts of onset, groans of death, horses trampling the fallen, limbs flying in the air, suffocating smoke, and thousands smarting in the agony of death, without a cup of water to quench their intolerable thirst! Do the principles of Christianity authorize such a scene? Are such horrors its fruits?

Inspect the field when all is over. The fair harvest trampled and destroyed, houses and batteries smoking in ruin, the mangled and suffering strewed among dead comrades, and dead horses, and broken gun-carriages. Prowlers strip the booty even from the warm bodies of the dying, jackals howl around, and disgusting birds are wheeling in the air; while the miserable wife seeks her loved one among the general carnage. Does all this look as if Christians had been there, serving the God of mercy? Could such works grow out of the system, heralded as bringing "Peace on earth"?

Turn your eyes to the ocean. A huge ship, bristling with implements of death, glides quietly along. Presently "a sail!" is called from sentinel to sentinel. All on board catch the sound, and gaze on the dim and distant outline. At length she is discovered to be a ship of war, and all strain their eyes to see her flag. On that little token hangs the important issue; for no feud, no jealousy exists between the crews. They do not even know each other. At length the signal is discerned to be that of a foe. Immediately what a scene ensues! Decks cleared and sanded, ports opened, guns run out, matches lighted, and every preparation made for bloody work. While waiting for the moment to engage, the worst passions of the men are appealed to to make them fight with fury; and they are inspired with all possible pride, hatred, revenge or ambition.

The fight begins! Death flies with every shot. Blood and carnage cover the decks. The rigging is cut to pieces; the hull bored with hot shot. The smoke, the confusion, the orders of officers, the yells of the wounded, the crash of timbers, the horrors of the cockpit, make a scene at which infernal fiends feel their malignity sated. At length one party strikes, and the strife is stayed. The conquered ship, ere her wounded can be removed, sinks into the deep. The victor, herself almost a wreck, throws overboard the slain, washes her decks, and turns toward her port, carrying the crippled, the agonized, and the dying of both ships! What anguish is there in that ship! What empty berths, late filled with the gay-hearted and the profane! What tidings does she carry, to spread lamentation and misery over hundreds of families!

Yet in all this, there was no personal feud or malice, no private wrong or offence. All was the mere result of some cabinet council, some kingly caprice. Could any enormity be more cold blooded and diabolical?

But no where does war wear such horrors as in a siege. The inhabitants are shut up; business, pleasure, education, intercourse are all checked; sorrow, terror, and distress prevail. Bombs fall and explode in the streets; citizens are killed in their houses, and soldiers on the ramparts. Women and children retreat to the cellars, and live there cold, dark, comfortless, terrified. Day after day, and month after month, roll tediously on, while the gloom constantly thickens, and the only news is of houses crushed, acquaintances killed, prices raised, and scarcity increased. Gladly would the citizens surrender, but the governor is inexorable. At 1ength, to all the horrors famine is added. The poor man, out of employ, cannot purchase customary comforts at the increased prices. His poverty becomes deeper, his sacrifices greater. But the siege continues. The middle classes sink to beggary, the poorer class to starvation. Anon, breaches are made in the wall; and all must work amid galling fire to repair them. Mines are sprung, blowing houses and occupants into the air. Still no relief comes. Dead animals, offal, skins, the very carcass of the slain, are eaten. The lone widow, the bereft mother, the disappointed bride, the despairing father, and the tender babe, mourn continually. Then comes pestilence, the necessary consequence of unburied dead, and unwonted hardships, and intolerable wo. At length, the city yields; or is taken by storm, and scenes even more horrid ensue. A brutal soldiery give loose to lust, and rapine, and destruction; and the indescribable scene closes with deserted streets, general ruin, and lasting lamentation.

This picture is far from being overwrought. The history of sieges furnish realities of deeper horror. Take for instance the second siege of Saragossa in 1814, or almost any other.

Now is this Christianity? Is it like it? Christianity cannot alter. If it will necessarily abolish all war, when the millennium shall give it universal influence, then it will abolish war now, so far as it has influence; and every man who receives it fully will be a man of peace. If religious persons may make fighting a trade on earth, they may fight in heaven. If we may lawfully cherish a war spirit here, we may cherish it there!

I close by quoting the words of the great Jeremy Taylor. "As contrary as cruelty is to mercy, and tyranny to charity, so contrary is war to the meekness and gentleness of the Christian religion."

II. WAR IS ONE OF THE MOST AWFUL AND COMPREHENSIVE FORMS OF WICKEDNESS.

What has been said, has gone to show how inconsistent, in principle, are war and Christianity. A few considerations will now be offered, illustrative of the practices of war. We shall be thus led to see, not only that it contradicts the genius, and violates the precepts of Christianity, but that it does so in the most gross and gigantic manner.

1. It is the worst form of robbery.

Common robberies are induced by want: but war commits them by choice, and often robs only to ravage. A man who rushes to the highway to rob, maddened by the sight of a famished family, may plead powerful temptation. But armies rob, burn, and destroy, in the coolest malice. See a file of men, well fed and well clothed by a great and powerful nation, proceed on a foraging party. They enter a retired vale, where a peaceful old man by hard handed toil supports his humble family. The officer points with his sword to the few stacks of hay and grain, laid up for winter. Remonstrances are vain – tears are vain. They bear off his only supply, take his cow, his pet lamb; add insult to oppression, and leave the ruined family to an almshouse or starvation. Aye, but the poor old man was an enemy, as the war phrase is, and the haughty soldiery claim merit for forbearance, because they did not conclude with burning down his house.

The seizure or destruction of public stores, is not less robbery. A nation has no more right to steal from a nation, than an individual has to steal from an individual. In principle, the act is the same; in magnitude, the sin is greater. All the private robberies in a thousand years, are not a tithe of the robberies of one war. Next to killing, it is the very object of each party to burn and destroy by sea, and ravage and lay waste on land. It is a malign and inexcusable barbarity, and constitutes a stupendous mass of theft.

In one of the Punic wars, Carthage, with 100,000 houses, was burnt and destroyed, so that not a house remained. The plunder carried away by the Romans, in precious metals and jewels alone, is reported to have been equal to five millions of pounds of silver. Who can compute the number of similar events, from the destruction of Jerusalem to that of Moscow? Arson, that is, the setting fire to an inhabited dwelling, is, in most countries, punishable by death. But more of this has been done in some single wars, than has been committed privately, since the world began. When some villain sets fire to a house and consumes it, what public indignation! What zeal to bring to justice! If, for a succession of nights, buildings are fired, what general panic! Yet how small the distress, compared to that which follows the burning of an entire city. In one case, the houseless still find shelter, the laborer obtains work, the children have food. But oh, the horrors of a general ruin! Earthquake is no worse.

It should not be overlooked, that a great part of the private robberies in Christendom, may be traced to the deterioration of morals, caused by war. Thousands of pirates, received their infamous education in national ships. Thousands of thieves, were disbanded soldiers. War taught these men to disregard the rights of property, to trample upon justice, and refuse mercy. Even if disposed to honest labor, which a militarv life always tends to render unpalatable, the disbanded soldier often finds himself unable to obtain employment. The industry of his country has been paralysed by the war; and the demand for labor slowly recurs. The discharged veteran therefore is often compelled to steal or starve. Thus war, by its own operations, involves continual and stupendous thefts, and by its unavoidable tendencies, multiplies offenders, who in time of peace prey upon community.

2. It involves the most enormous Sabbath breaking.

The Sabbath cannot be observed by armies. Common camp duty forbids it. Extra duties are assigned to Sunday – such as parades, drill, inspections, and reviews. Seldom is any effort made to avoid marches, or even battles, on Sunday. I have been able to find, in all history, but one battle postponed on account of the Sabbath. In thousands of instances, as in the case of Waterloo, it has been the chosen day for conflict.

War tends to abolish the Sabbath, even when the army is not present. The heavy trains of the commissary must move on. The arsenal and the ship yard must maintain their activity. Innumerable mechanics, watermen, and laborers, must be kept busy. During our late war with England, who did not witness on all our frontiers, even in the States of New England, the general desecration of the holy day? Men swarmed like ants on a mole hill, to throw up entrenchments; the wharves resounded with din of business; and idlers forsook the house of God to gaze upon the scenes of preparation.

Do Christians consider these unavoidable results, when they give their voice for war? No. The calm consideration of such concomitants, would make it impossible for them to advise or sanction the profane and abominable thing.

3. War produces a wicked waste of national wealth.

The disbursements of a belligerent government, drawn of course by taxation from the laboring community, form an incalculable amount. Our last war with England cost us more than a hundred millions of dollars per annum. During the last 175 years, ENGLAND has had twenty-four wars with France, twelve with Scotland, eight with Spain, and two with America, besides all her other wars in India and elsewhere. These have cost her government, according to official returns, three thousand millions of pounds sterling, or FIFTEEN THOUSAND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! The war which ended at Waterloo, cost France £700,000,000, and Austria £300,000,000, or five thousand millions of dollars! How much it cost Spain, Sweden, Holland, Germany, Prussia and Russia, I have no means of knowing, but at least an equal sum. Thus one long war cost Europe at least forty thousand millions! The annual interest of this sum, at five per cent., is two thousand millions of dol1ars, – enough almost to banish suffering poverty from Europe! For all this, NOTHING has been gained. Nay, the spending of it thus has produced an aggregate of vice and poverty, pain and bereavement, more than, without war, would have come upon the whole human family since the flood! Who then can begin to compute the cost of all the wars even in Europe alone?

We often hear much railing against useless expenditure, and proposals for economy in dress, furniture, &c., and it is well. But those who insist on these modes of frugality should be consistent. Let them remember that all the retrenchments they recommend are but as the dust of the balance compared to the expenditures of a war. But vast as are the expenses of belligerent governments, they do not constitute a tenth of the true expenses of war! We must reckon the destruction of property, private and public – the ruin of trade and commerce – the suspension of manufactories – the loss of the productive labor of soldiers and camp followers. But who can reckon such amounts?

Further, let it be considered that all these items must be doubled and trebled in cases of civil wars, and that such form a large part of the catalogue.

Further still, war causes the great bulk of taxation even in time of peace! Witness the annual appropriations for fleets and standing armies, forts, arsenal, weapons, pensions, &c. Even since our last war with England, we have been paying annually, for the above objects, about ten times us much as for the support of our civil government!! "The war spirit" is taxing our people to the amount of unnumbered millions, now in time of profound peace. A single 74 gun ship, beside all her cost of construction and equipment, costs in time of peace, while afloat, $200,000 per annum – eight times the salary of the President of the United States. Nearly all the taxes paid by civilized nations, go in some form or other to the support of war! All the British debt which is grinding her people into the dust, was created by war. The cost of the wars of Europe alone, in only the last century, would have built all the canals, railroads, and churches, and established all the schools, colleges, and hospitals, wanted on the whole globe!

4. War is the grossest form of murder.

Private murders are atrocious – those of war far more so. But the contrary opinion prevails; and we adduce proofs. War enhances the crime of murder on the following accounts:

(1.) It is more cold-blooded and cruel.

Malice prompts private murder, and the proof of it is necessary to conviction by a jury; and the more cool and calculating, the more guilt. But murder in war is more cool and calculating, than even in a duel. The question of war or peace is calmly debated, deliberately resolved upon, and proclaimed in form. Armies are raised, and drilled, and marched, and engaged, with all coolness and calculation. The contending hosts know not each other, cherish no personal hate, and seldom know the true grounds of the contest. All is done with whatever of aggravation attends deliberate homicide.

(2.) It is more vast in amount.

Computation falters when we estimate the numbers slain in war or by reason of it. Three hundred thousand men fell in one battle, when Attila, king of the Huns, was defeated at Chalons. Nearly the entire army of Xerxes, consisting of four millions of persons, perished. Julius Caesar, in one campaign in Germany, destroyed half a million. More than half a million perished in one campaign of Napoleon, averaging 3000 men a day. Paying no attention to the innumerable wars among Pagans before and since the birth of Christ, nor to all the wasting wars of the past seventeen centuries, it is matter of distinct calculation that about five millions of nominal Christians have been butchered by nominal Christians, within the last half century! What then has been the total of war-murders since creation?

Nor is the number of the slain the real total. Multitudes of "the wounded and missing" die; multitudes perish out of armies and fleets without battle, by hardships, exposure, vice, contagion, and climate. We ought, therefore, at least to double the number slain in engagements, to arrive at true sum; and make ten millions of men destroyed within half a century by Christian nations’ quarrels!

(3.) Deaths caused by war, are accompanied by horrid aggravations of suffering.

The wretches die, not on beds of down, surrounded by all that can relieve or palliate suffering. No soft hand smooths the couch, or wipes the brow. No skilful physician stands watching every symptom. The silence, the quiet, the cleanliness, the sympathy, the love, the skill, that divest the chamber of death of all its horror, and half its anguish, are not for the poor soldier. Private murder is always done in haste, and the sufferer is often dismissed from life in a moment. Not so in war. Few are killed outright. The victim dies slowly of unmedicated wounds. Prostrate amid the trampling of columns and of horses which have lost their riders, or in a trench, amid heaps of killed and wounded, he dies a hundred deaths. If, mangled and miserable, he finds himself still alive, when the tide of battle has passed, how forlorn his condition! Unable to drag himself from the ghastly scene, his gory limbs chilled with the damps of night, tortured with thirst, and quivering with pain, his heart siekened with the remembrance of home, and his soul dismayed at the approach of eternal retributions, he meets death with all that can make it terrific.

(4.) The multitudes murdered in war, are generally sent to hell.

The thought is too horrible for steady contemplation; but we are bound to consider it. "No murderer hath eternal life." Soldiers are murderers in intent and profession, and die in the act of killing others, and with imp1ements of murder in their hands. Without space for repentance, they are hurried to the bar of God. On what grounds may we affirm their sa1vation? O that those that know the worth of souls, would dwell on this feature of the dreadful custom!

(5.) War first corrupts those whom it destroys, and thus aggravates damnation itself.

Bad as are most men who enlist in standing armies, war makes them worse. They might at any rate be lost, but their vocation sends them to a more dreadful doom. The recruit begins his degradation, even in the rendezvous, ere he has lodged a week within its walls. He grows still worse in camp.

In the army, vice becomes his occupation. His worst passions are fostered. His Sabbaths are necessarily profaned. He becomes ashamed of tender feelings, and conscientious scrup1es. Thus an old soldier is generally a hardened offender; and the shot that terminates his life, consigns him to a death rendered more terrible by his profession. Had the money and time, which has been lavished to equip and drill and support him as a soldier, been spent for his intellectual and moral improvement, he might have been an ornament to society, and a pillar in the church.

Mark his grim corpse as men bear it to the gaping pit into which whole cart-loads of bodies are thrown. The property, nay the liberty of a whole nation is not a price for his soul! How then can Christians with one hand give to the support of missions, and with the other uphold a custom which counteracts every good enterprise?

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

How strange, how awful, that to such a trade as war, mankind has, in all ages, lifted up its admiration! Poetry lends its fascinations, and philosophy its inventions. Eloquence, in forum and field, has wrought up the war spirit to fanaticism and frenzy. Even the pulpit, whose legitimate and glorious theme is "PEACE ON EARTH," has not withheld its solemn sanctions. The tender sex, with strange infatuation, have admired the tinselled trappings of him whose trade is to make widows and orphans. Their hands have been withdrawn from the distaff, to embroider warrior’s ensigns. T'he young mother has arrayed her proud boy with cap and feather, toyed him with drum and sword, and trained him, unconsciously, to love and admire the profession of a man-killer.

The universal maxim has been, "in peace prepare for war;" and men are all their days contributing and taxing themselves to defray the expenses of killing each other. Scarcely has a voice been lifted up to spread the principles of peace. Every other principle of Christianity has had its apostles. Howard reformed prisons; Sharp, and Clarkson, and Wilberforce arrested the s1ave-trade. Carey carried the gospel to India. Every form of vice has its antagonists, and every class of sufferers find philanthropists. But who stands forth to urge the law of love? Who attacks this monster WAR? We have not waited for the millennium to abolish intemperance, or Sabbath breaking; but we wait for it to abolish war. It is certain that the millennium cannot come, till war expires.

Shall it so remain? Shall this gorgon of pride, corruption, destructiveness, misery and murder, be still admired and fed, while it is turning men’s hearts to stone, and the garden of the Lord into the desolation of death? Let every heart say no. Let Christians shine before men as sons of peace, not less than as sons of justice and truth. If wars and rumors of wars continue, let the church stand aloof. It is time she was purged of this stain. Her brotherhood embraces all nations. Earth1y rulers may tell us we have enemies; but our heavenly King commands us to return them good for evil; if they hunger, to feed them; if they thirst, to give them drink.

Rise then, Christians, to noble resolution and vigorous endeavors! Retire from military trainings, and spurn the thought of being hired by the month to rob and kill. Refuse to study the tactics, or practice the handicraft of death; and with "a hope that maketh not ashamed," proclaim the principles of universal peace, as part and parcel of eternal truth.

A portion of our missionary spirit should be expended in this department. Shall we pour out our money and our prayers, when we hear of a widow burnt on her husband’s funeral pile, or deluded wretches crushed beneath the wheels of Juggernaut, but do nothing to dethrone this Moloch to whom hundreds of millions of Christians have been sacrificed? Among the fifty millions of the Presidency of Bengal, the average number of suttees (widows burned, &c.) has for twenty years been less than 500, or in the proportion of one death in a year for such a population as Philadelphia. What is this to war? Every day of some campaigns has cost more lives!

We must not abstain from effort, because of apparent obstacles. What great reform does not meet obstructions? .... [T]he temperance movement, and a host of similar historic facts, show that truth is mighty, and when fairly and perseveringly exhibited, will prevail. It can be shown, that in attempting to abolish all war, we encounter fewer impediments than have attended various other great changes. Even if it were not so, we have a duty to discharge whether we prevail or not. Moral obligation does not rest on the chance of success.

Our obstacle are neither numerous nor formidable. No classes of men love war for its own sake. If it were abolished, those who now make it a profession, could all find profitable and pleasanter employment in peaceful pursuits. Men’s interests are not against us; but the contrary. The people are not blood-thirsty. What serious impediment is there to obstruct the diffusion of peace principles? None more than beset even the most popular enterprise of literature or benevolence. Our only obstruction is apathy, and the unfortunate sentiment that the millennium is to do it away, we know not how. But we might as well do nothing against intemperance, or Sabbath-breaking, or heresy; and wait for the millennium to do them away. Nothing will be done in this world without means, even when the millennium shall have come.

Do you ask what you can do? Much, very much, whoever you are. Cherish in yourself the true peace-spirit. Try to diffuse it. Assist in enlightening your neighbors. Talk of the horrors of war, its impolicy, its cost, its depravity, its utter uselessness in adjusting national disputes. Teach children correctly on this point, and show them the true character of war, stripped of its music and mock splendor. Banish drums and swords from among their toys. Proclaim aloud the Divine government, and teach men how vain it is, even in a righteous cause, to trust an arm of flesh. Insist that patriotism, in its common acceptation, is not a virtue; for it limits us to love our country, and allows us to hate and injure other nations. Thus if Canada were annexed to our Union, we must, on that account, love Canadians. But if South Carolina should secede, we must withdraw part of our love, or perhaps go to war and kill as many as possible. O how absurd to act thus, as though God’s immutable law of love was to be obeyed or not as our boundaries may be.

"Lands intersected by a narrow sea,

Abhor each other. Mountains interposed,
Make enemies of nations who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one."

Let us feel and disseminate the sentiment that true patriotism is shown only by the good. A man may claim to be a patriot, and love "his country," whose feelings are so vague and worthless that he loves no one in it! He loves a mere name! or rather, his patriotism is a mere name. Whole classes of his fellow-citizens may remain in vice, ignorance, slavery, poverty, and yet he feels no sympathy, offers no aid. Sodom would have been saved, had there been in it ten righteous. These then would have been patriots. These would have saved their country. We have in our land many righteous. These are our security. These save the land from a curse. These therefore are the only true patriots.

Let us unite in "showing up" military glory. What is it? Grant that it is all that it has ever passed for, and it still seems superlatively worthless. The wreaths of conquerors fade daily. We give their names to dogs and slaves. The smallest useful volume guides its author a better and more lasting name. And how absurd, too, is it to talk to common soldiers and under officers about military glory! Among the many millions who have toiled and died for love of glory, scarce1y a score are remembered among men! Who of our revolutionary heroes but Washington and Lafayette are known in the opposite hemisphere? Who of our own citizens can tell over a half dozen distinguished soldiers in our struggle for independence? Yet that war is of late date. Of the men of former wars we know almost nothing. Essential1y stupid then is the love of military renown in petty officers and the common private. They stake their lives in a lottery where there is hardly a prize in five hundred years!

Let us print and propagate peace principles. Public opinion has been changed on many points by a few resolute men. Let us keep the subject before the people till every man forms a deliberate opinion, whether Christianity allows or forbids war. Let us at least do so much that if ever our country engages in another war, we shall feel no share of the guilt. Let us each do so much that if we should ever walk over a battle-field, stunned with the groans and curses of the wounded, and horror-struck at the infernal spectacle, we can feel that we aid all we could to avert such an evil. Let us clear ourselves of blame. No one of us can put a stop to war. But we can help stop it – and combined and persevering effort will stop it.

Originally posted April 13, 2011

Laurence M. Vance writes from central Florida. He is the author of Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State, The Revolution that Wasn't, and Rethinking the Good War. His latest book is The Quatercentenary of the King James Bible.

Pope John Paul II Beatification Homily

2011-05-01T02:40:00.004-07:00

Homily, Pope Benedict XVI, Rome 1 May 2011

During the Mass in which Pope Benedict XVI beatified his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, he gave the following homily.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Six years ago we gathered in this Square to celebrate the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Our grief at his loss was deep, but even greater was our sense of an immense grace which embraced Rome and the whole world: a grace which was in some way the fruit of my beloved predecessor’s entire life, and especially of his witness in suffering. Even then we perceived the fragrance of his sanctity, and in any number of ways God’s People showed their veneration for him. For this reason, with all due respect for the Church’s canonical norms, I wanted his cause of beatification to move forward with reasonable haste. And now the longed-for day has come; it came quickly because this is what was pleasing to the Lord: John Paul II is blessed!

I would like to offer a cordial greeting to all of you who on this happy occasion have come in such great numbers to Rome from all over the world – cardinals, patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches, brother bishops and priests, official delegations, ambassadors and civil authorities, consecrated men and women and lay faithful, and I extend that greeting to all those who join us by radio and television. Today is the Second Sunday of Easter, which Blessed John Paul II entitled Divine Mercy Sunday. The date was chosen for today’s celebration because, in God’s providence, my predecessor died on the vigil of this feast. Today is also the first day of May, Mary’s month, and the liturgical memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker. All these elements serve to enrich our prayer, they help us in our pilgrimage through time and space; but in heaven a very different celebration is taking place among the angels and saints! Even so, God is but one, and one too is Christ the Lord, who like a bridge joins earth to heaven. At this moment we feel closer than ever, sharing as it were in the liturgy of heaven.

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (Jn 20:29). In today’s Gospel Jesus proclaims this beatitude: the beatitude of faith. For us, it is particularly striking because we are gathered to celebrate a beatification, but even more so because today the one proclaimed blessed is a Pope, a Successor of Peter, one who was called to confirm his brethren in the faith. John Paul II is blessed because of his faith, a strong, generous and apostolic faith. We think at once of another beatitude: "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven" (Mt 16:17). What did our heavenly Father reveal to Simon? That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Because of this faith, Simon becomes Peter, the rock on which Jesus can build his Church. The eternal beatitude of John Paul II, which today the Church rejoices to proclaim, is wholly contained in these sayings of Jesus: "Blessed are you, Simon" and "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe!" It is the beatitude of faith, which John Paul II also received as a gift from God the Father for the building up of Christ’s Church.

Our thoughts turn to yet another beatitude, one which appears in the Gospel before all others. It is the beatitude of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer. Mary, who had just conceived Jesus, was told by Saint Elizabeth: "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord" (Lk 1:45). The beatitude of faith has its model in Mary, and all of us rejoice that the beatification of John Paul II takes place on this first day of the month of Mary, beneath the maternal gaze of the one who by her faith sustained the faith of the Apostles and constantly sustains the faith of their successors, especially those called to occupy the Chair of Peter. Mary does not appear in the accounts of Christ’s resurrection, yet hers is, as it were, a continual, hidden presence: she is the Mother to whom Jesus entrusted each of his disciples and the entire community. In particular we can see how Saint John and Saint Luke record the powerful, maternal presence of Mary in the passages preceding those read in today’s Gospel and first reading. In the account of Jesus’ death, Mary appears at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25), and at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles she is seen in the midst of the disciples gathered in prayer in the Upper Room (Acts 1:14). Today’s second reading also speaks to us of faith. Saint Peter himself, filled with spiritual enthusiasm, points out to the newly-baptized the reason for their hope and their joy. I like to think how in this passage, at the beginning of his First Letter, Peter does not use language of exhortation; instead, he states a fact. He writes: "you rejoice", and he adds: "you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls" (1 Pet 1:6, 8-9). All these verbs are in the indicative, because a new reality has come about in Christ’s resurrection, a reality to which faith opens the door. "This is the Lord’s doing", says the Psalm (118:23), and "it is marvelous in our eyes", the eyes of faith.

Dear brothers and sisters, today our eyes behold, in the full spiritual light of the risen Christ, the beloved and revered figure of John Paul II. Today his name is added to the host of those whom he proclaimed saints and blesseds during the almost twenty-seven years of his pontificate, thereby forcefully emphasizing the universal vocation to the heights of the Christian life, to holiness, taught by the conciliar Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium. All of us, as members of the people of God – bishops, priests, deacons, laity, men and women religious – are making our pilgrim way to the heavenly homeland where the Virgin Mary has preceded us, associated as she was in a unique and perfect way to the mystery of Christ and the Church. Karol Wojtyła took part in the Second Vatican Council, first as an auxiliary Bishop and then as Archbishop of Kraków. He was fully aware that the Council’s decision to devote the last chapter of its Constitution on the Church to Mary meant that the Mother of the Redeemer is held up as an image and model of holiness for every Christian and for the entire Church. This was the theological vision which Blessed John Paul II discovered as a young man and subsequently maintained and deepened throughout his life. A vision which is expressed in the scriptural image of the crucified Christ with Mary, his Mother, at his side. This icon from the Gospel of John (19:25-27) was taken up in the episcopal and later the papal coat-of-arms of Karol Wojtyła: a golden cross with the letter "M" on the lower right and the motto "Totus tuus", drawn from the well-known words of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort in which Karol Wojtyła found a guiding light for his life: "Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria – I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart" (Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 266).

In his Testament, the new Blessed wrote: "When, on 16 October 1978, the Conclave of Cardinals chose John Paul II, the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, said to me: ‘The task of the new Pope will be to lead the Church into the Third Millennium’". And the Pope added: "I would like once again to express my gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the great gift of the Second Vatican Council, to which, together with the whole Church – and especially with the whole episcopate – I feel indebted. I am convinced that it will long be granted to the new generations to draw from the treasures that this Council of the twentieth century has lavished upon us. As a Bishop who took part in the Council from the first to the last day, I desire to entrust this great patrimony to all who are and will be called in the future to put it into practice. For my part, I thank the Eternal Shepherd, who has enabled me to serve this very great cause in the course of all the years of my Pontificate". And what is this "cause"? It is the same one that John Paul II presented during his first solemn Mass in Saint Peter’s Square in the unforgettable words: "Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ!" What the newly-elected Pope asked of everyone, he was himself the first to do: society, culture, political and economic systems he opened up to Christ, turning back with the strength of a titan – a strength which came to him from God – a tide which appeared irreversible. By his witness of faith, love and apostolic courage, accompanied by great human charisma, this exemplary son of Poland helped believers throughout the world not to be afraid to be called Christian, to belong to the Church, to speak of the Gospel. In a word: he helped us not to fear the truth, because truth is the guarantee of liberty. To put it even more succinctly: he gave us the strength to believe in Christ, because Christ is Redemptor hominis, the Redeemer of man. This was the theme of his first encyclical, and the thread which runs though all the others.

When Karol Wojtyła ascended to the throne of Peter, he brought with him a deep understanding of the difference between Marxism and Christianity, based on their respective visions of man. This was his message: man is the way of the Church, and Christ is the way of man. With this message, which is the great legacy of the Second Vatican Council and of its "helmsman", the Servant of God Pope Paul VI, John Paul II led the People of God across the threshold of the Third Millennium, which thanks to Christ he was able to call "the threshold of hope". Throughout the long journey of preparation for the great Jubilee he directed Christianity once again to the future, the future of God, which transcends history while nonetheless directly affecting it. He rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress. He restored to Christianity its true face as a religion of hope, to be lived in history in an "Advent" spirit, in a personal and communitarian existence directed to Christ, the fullness of humanity and the fulfillment of all our longings for justice and peace.

Finally, on a more personal note, I would like to thank God for the gift of having worked for many years with Blessed Pope John Paul II. I had known him earlier and had esteemed him, but for twenty-three years, beginning in 1982 after he called me to Rome to be Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I was at his side and came to revere him all the more. My own service was sustained by his spiritual depth and by the richness of his insights. His example of prayer continually impressed and edified me: he remained deeply united to God even amid the many demands of his ministry. Then too, there was his witness in suffering: the Lord gradually stripped him of everything, yet he remained ever a "rock", as Christ desired. His profound humility, grounded in close union with Christ, enabled him to continue to lead the Church and to give to the world a message which became all the more eloquent as his physical strength declined. In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Eucharist.

Blessed are you, beloved Pope John Paul II, because you believed! Continue, we implore you, to sustain from heaven the faith of God’s people. Amen.

[Vatican Press Office; Original: Italian]

Resurrection Morn

2011-04-24T02:00:00.004-07:00

(Resurrection Morn by Herbert Gustave Schmalz, 1856-1935. Oil on canvas; 1895.)

"On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn."

~G.K. Chesterton: The Everlasting Man

The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Volume 2: The Everlasting Man, St. Francis of Assisi, St Thomas Aquinas

The Euro-US War on Libya

2011-03-31T01:39:00.008-07:00

...Official Lies and Misconceptions of Critics
By James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya
March 30, 2011. Source: Information Clearing House

Many critics of the ongoing Euro-US wars in the Middle East and, now, North Africa, have based their arguments on clichés and generalizations devoid of fact. The most common line heard in regard to the current US-Euro war on Libya is that it’s “all about oil” – the goal is the seizure of Libya’s oil wells.

On the other hand Euro-U.S, government spokespeople defend the war by claiming it’s “all about saving civilian lives in the face of genocide”, calling it “humanitarian intervention”.

Following the lead of their imperial powers, most of what passes for the Left in the US and Europe, ranging from Social Democrats, Marxists, Trotskyists,Greens and other assorted progressives, claim they see and support a revolutionary mass uprising of the Libyan people, and not a few have called for military intervention by the imperial powers, or the same thing, the UN, to help the “Libyan revolutionaries” defeat the Gaddafi dictatorship.

These arguments are without foundation and belie the true nature of US-UK-French imperial power, expansionist militarism, as evidenced in all the ongoing wars over the past decade (Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.). What is much more revealing about the militarist intervention in Libya is that the major countries, which refused to engage in the War, operate via a very different form of global expansion based on economic and market forces. China, India, Brazil, Russia, Turkey and Germany, the most dynamic capitalist countries in Asia, Europe and the Middle East are fundamentally opposed to the self-styled “allied” military response against the Libyan government – because Gaddafi represents no threat to their security and they already have full access to the oil and a favorable investment climate. Besides, these economically dynamic countries see no prospect for a stable, progressive or democratic Libyan government emerging from the so-called ‘rebel’ leaders, who are disparate elites competing for power and Western favor.

1. The Six Myths about Libya: Right and Left

The principal imperial powers and their mass media mouthpieces claim they are bombing Libya for “humanitarian reasons”. Their recent past and current military interventions present a different picture: The intervention in Iraq resulted in well over a million civilian deaths, four million refugees and the systematic destruction of a complex society and its infrastructure, including its water supplies and sewage treatment, irrigation, electricity grid, factories, not to mention research centers, schools, historical archives, museums and Iraq’s extensive social welfare system.

A worse disaster followed the invasion of Afghanistan. What was trumpeted as a ‘humanitarian intervention’ to liberate Afghan women and drive out the Taliban resulted in a human catastrophe for the Afghan people.

The road to imperial barbarism in Iraq began with ‘sanctions’, progressed to ‘no fly zones’, then de facto partition of the north, invasion and foreign occupation and the unleashing of sectarian warfare among the ‘liberated’ Iraqi death squads.

Equally telling, the imperial assault against Yugoslavia in the 1990s, trotted out as the great “humanitarian war” to stop genocide, led to a 40-day aerial bombardment and destruction of Belgrade and other major cities, the imposition of a gangster terrorist regime (KLA) in Kosovo, the near-total ethnic cleansing of all non-Albanian residents from Kosovo and the construction of the largest US military base on the continent (Camp Bondsteel).

The bombing of Libya has already destroyed major civilian infrastructure, airports, roads, seaports and communication centers, as well as ‘military’ targets. The blockade of Libya and military attacks have driven out scores of multi-national corporations and led to the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Asian, Eastern European, Sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern and North African skilled and unskilled immigrant workers and specialists of all types, devastating the economy and creating, virtually overnight, massive unemployment, bread-lines and critical gasoline shortages.

Moreover, following the logic of previous imperial military interventions, the seemingly ‘restrained’ call to patrol the skies via “no fly zone”, has led directly to bombing civilian as well as military targets on the ground, and is pushing to overthrow the legitimate government. The current imperial warmongers leading the attack on Libya, just like their predecessors, are not engaged in anything remotely resembling a humanitarian mission: they are destroying the fundamental basis of the civilian lives they claim to be saving – or as an earlier generation of American generals would claim in Vietnam, they are ‘destroying the villages in order to save them’.

2. War for Oil or Oil for Sale?

The ‘critical’ Left’s favorite cliché is that the imperial invasion is all about “seizing control of Libya’s oil and turning it over to their multi-nationals”. This is despite the fact that US, French and British multinationals (as well as their Asian competitors) had already “taken over” millions of acres of Libyan oil fields without dropping a single bomb.

For the past decade, “Big Oil” had been pumping and exporting Libyan oil and gas and reaping huge profits. Gaddafi welcomed the biggest MNC’s to exploit the oil wealth of Libya from the early 1990s to the present day. There are more major oil companies doing business in Libya than in most oil producing regions in the world.

These include: British Petroleum, with a seven-year contract on two concessions and over $1 billion dollars in planned investments. Each BP concession exploits huge geographic areas of Libya, one the size of Kuwait and the other the size of Belgium. In addition, five Japanese major corporations, including Mitsubishi and Nippon Petroleum, Italy’s Eni Gas, British Gas and the US giant Exxon Mobil signed new exploration and exploitation contracts in October 2010. The most recent oil concession signed in January 2010 mainly benefited US oil companies, especially Occidental Petroleum. Other multi-nationals operating in Libya include Royal Dutch Shell, Total (France), Oil India, CNBC (China), Indonesia’s Pertamina and Norway’s Norsk Hydro.

Despite the economic sanctions against Libya, imposed by US President Reagan in 1986, US multinational giant, Halliburton, had secured multi-billion dollar gas and oil projects since the 1980s. During his tenure as CEO of Halliburton, former Defense Secretary Cheney led the fight against these sanctions stating, “as a nation (there is) enormous value having American businesses engaged around the world”. Officially, sanctions against Libya were only lifted under Bush in 2004. Clearly, with all the European and US imperial countries already exploiting Libya oil on a massive scale, the mantra that the “war is about oil” doesn’t hold water or oil!

3. Gaddafi is a Terrorist

In the run-up to the current military assault on Tripoli,the US Treasury Department’s (and Israel’s special agent) Stuart Levey, authored a sanctions policy freezing $30 billion dollars in Libyan assets on the pretext that Gaddafi was a murderous tyrant. However, seven years earlier, Cheney, Bush and Condoleezza Rice had taken Libya off the list of terrorist regimes and ordered Levey and his minions to lift the Reagan-era sanctions. Every major European power quickly followed suite: Gaddafi was welcomed in European capitals, prime ministers visited Tripoli and Gaddafi reciprocated by unilaterally dismantling his nuclear and chemical weapons programs. Gaddafi became Washington’s partner in its campaign against a broad array of groups, political movements and individuals arbitrarily placed on the US’ “terror list”, arresting, torturing and killing Al Qaeda suspects, expelling Palestinian militants and openly criticizing Hezbollah, Hamas and other opponents of Israel.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission gave the Gaddafi regime a clean bill of health in 2010. In the end Gaddafi’s political ‘turnabout’, however much celebrated by the Western elite, did not save him from this massive military assault. The imposition of neo-liberal ‘reforms’, his political ‘apostasy’ and cooperation in the ‘War on Terror’ and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, only weakened the regime. Libya became vulnerable to attack and isolated from any consequential anti-imperialist allies. Gaddafi’s much ballyhooed concessions to the West set his regime up as an easy target for the militarists of Washington, London and Paris, eager for a quick ‘victory’.

4. The Myth of the Revolutionary Masses

The Left, including the mainly electoral social democrat, green and even left-socialist parties of Europe and the US swallowed the entire mass media propaganda package demonizing the Gaddafi regime while lauding the ‘rebels’. Parroting their imperial mentors, the ‘Left’ justified their support for imperial military intervention in the name of the “revolutionary Libyan people”, the “peace-loving” masses “fighting tyranny” and organizing peoples’ militias to “liberate their country”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The center of the armed uprising is Benghazi, longtime monarchist hotbed of tribal supporters and clients of the deposed King Idris and his family. Idris, until he was overthrown by the young firebrand Col. Gaddafi, had ruled Libya with an iron fist over a semi-feudal backwater and was popular with Washington, having given the US its largest air base (Wheeler) in the Mediterranean. Among the feuding leaders of the “transitional council” in Benghazi (who purport to lead but have few organized followers) one finds neo-liberal expats, who first promoted the Euro-US military invasion envisioning their ride to power on the back of Western missiles. They openly favor dismantling the Libyan state oil companies currently engaged in joint ventures with foreign MNCs. Independent observers have commented on the lack of any clear reformist tendencies, let alone revolutionary organizations or democratic popular movements among the ‘rebels’.

While the US, British and French are firing missiles, loaded with depleted uranium, at the Libyan military and key civilian installations, their ‘allies’ the armed militias in Benghazi, rather than go to battle against the regime’s armed forces, are busy rounding up, arresting and often executing any suspected members of Gaddafi’s “revolutionary committees”, arbitrarily labeling these civilians as “fifth columnists”. The top leaders of these “revolutionary” masses in Benghazi include two recent defectors from what the ‘Left’ dubs Gaddafi’s “murderous regime”: Mustafa Abdul Jalil, a former Justice minister, who prosecuted dissenters up to the day before the armed uprising, Mahmoud Jebri, who was prominent in inviting multi-nationals to take over the oil fields, and Gaddafi’s former ambassador to India, Ali Aziz al-Eisawa, who jumped ship as soon as it looked like the uprising appeared to be succeeding.

These self-appointed ‘leaders’ of the rebels who now staunchly support the Euro-US military intervention, were long-time supporters of the Gaddafi’s dictatorship and promoters of MNC takeovers of oil and gas fields. The heads of the “rebels” military council is Omar Hariri and General Abdul Fattah Younis, former head of the Ministry of Interior. Both men have long histories (since 1969) of repressing democratic movements within Libya. Given their unsavory background, it is not surprising that these top level military defectors to the ‘rebel’ cause have been unable to arouse their troops, mostly conscripts, to engage the loyalist forces backing Gaddafi. They too will have to take a ride into Tripoli on the coattails of the Anglo-US-French armed forces.

The anti-Gaddafi force’s lack of any democratic credentials and mass support is evident in their reliance on foreign imperial armed forces to bring them to power and their subservience to imperial demands. Their abuse and persecution of immigrant workers from Asia, Turkey and especially sub-Sahara Africa, as well as black Libyan citizens, is well documented in the international press. Their brutal treatment of black Libyans, falsely accused of being Gaddafi’s “mercenaries”, includes torture, mutilation and horrific executions, does not auger well for the advent of a new democratic order, or even the revival of an economy, which has been dependent on immigrant labor, let alone a unified country with national institutions and a national economy.

The self-declared leadership of the “National Transitional Council” is not democratic, nationalist or even capable of uniting the country. These are not credible leaders capable of restoring the economy and creating jobs lost as a result of their armed power grab. No one seriously envisions these ‘exiles’, tribalists, monarchists and Islamists maintaining the paternalistic social welfare and employment programs created by the Gaddafi government and which gave Libyans the highest per-capita income in Africa.

5. Al Qaeda

The greatest geographical concentration of suspected terrorists with links to Al Qaeda just happens to be in the areas dominated by the “rebels”. For over a decade Gaddafi has been in the forefront of the fight against Al Qaeda, following his embrace of the Bush-Obama ‘War on Terror’ doctrine.

These jihadist Libyans, having honed their skills in US-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, are now among the ranks of the “rebels” fighting the much more secular Libyan government. Likewise, the tribal chiefs, fundamentalist clerics and monarchists in the East have been active in a “holy war” against Gaddafi welcoming arms and air support from the Anglo-French-US “crusaders” – just like the mullahs and tribal chiefs welcomed the arms and training from the Carter-Reagan White House to overthrow a secular regime in Afghanistan. Once again, imperial intervention is based on ‘alliances’ with the most retrograde forces. The composition of the future regime (or regimes, if Libya is divided) is a big question and the prospects of a return to political stability for Big Oil to profitably exploit Libya’s resources are dubious.

6. “Genocide” or Armed Civil War

Unlike all ongoing mass popular Arab uprisings, the Libyan conflict began as an armed insurrection, directed at seizing power by force. Unlike the autocratic rulers of Egypt and Tunisia, Gaddafi has secured a mass regional base among a substantial sector of the Libyan population. This support is based on the fact that almost two generations of Libyans have benefited from Gaddafi’s petroleum-financed welfare, educational, employment and housing programs, none of which existed under America’s favorite, King Idris.

Since violence is inherent in any armed uprising, once one picks up the gun to seize power, they lose their claim on ‘civil rights’. In armed civil conflicts, civil rights are violated on all sides. Regardless of the Western media’s lurid portrayal of Gaddafi’s “African mercenary forces” and its more muted approval of ‘revolutionary justice’ against Gaddafi supporters and government soldiers captured in the rebel strongholds, the rules of warfare should have come into play, including the protection of non-combatants-civilians (including government supporters and officials), as well as protection of Libyan prisoners of war in the areas under NATO-rebel control.

The unsubstantiated Euro-US claim of “genocide” amplified by the mass media and parroted by “left” spokespersons is contradicted by the daily reports of single and double digit deaths and injuries, resulting from urban violence on both sides, as control of cities and towns shifts between the two sides.

Truth is the first casualty of war, and especially of civil war. Both sides have resorted to monstrous fabrications of victories, casualties, monsters and victims.

Demons and angels aside, this conflict began as a civil war between two sets of Libyan elites: An established paternalistic, now burgeoning neo-liberal autocracy with substantial popular backing versus a western imperialist financed and trained elite, backed by an amorphous group of regional, tribal and clerical chiefs, monarchists and neo-liberal professionals devoid of democratic and nationalist credentials – and lacking broad-based mass support.

Conclusion

If not to prevent genocide, grab the oil or promote democracy (via Patriot missiles), what, then, is the driving force behind the Euro-US imperial intervention?

A clue is in the selectivity of Western military intervention: In Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Qatar and Oman ruling autocrats, allied with, and backed by, Euro-US imperial states go about arresting, torturing and murdering unarmed urban protestors with total impunity.

In Egypt and Tunisia, the US is backing a conservative junta of self-appointed civil-military elites in order to block the profound democratic and nationalist transformation of society demanded by the protesters. The ‘junta’ aims to push through neo-liberal economic “reforms” through carefully-vetted pro-Western ‘elected’ officials.

While liberal critics may accuse the West of “hypocrisy” and “double standards” in bombing Gaddafi but not the Gulf butchers, in reality the imperial rulers consistently apply the same standards in each region. They defend strategic autocratic client regimes, which have allowed imperial states to build strategic air force and naval bases, run regional intelligence operations and set up logistical platforms for their ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as their future planned conflict with Iran. They attack Gaddafi’s Libya precisely because Gaddafi had refused to actively contribute to Western military operations in Africa and the Middle East.

The key point is that while Libya allows the biggest US-European multi-nationals to plunder its oil wealth, it did not become a strategic geo-political-military asset of the empire. As we have written in many previous essays the driving force of US empire-building is military and not economic. This is why billions of dollars of Western economic interests and contracts had been sacrificed in the setting up of sanctions against Iraq and Iran – with the costly result that the invasion and occupation of Iraq shut down most oil exploitation for over a decade.

The Washington-led assault on Libya, with the majority of air sorties and missiles strikes being carried out by the Obama regime, is part of a more general counter-attack in response to the most recent Arab popular pro-democracy movements. The West is backing the suppression of these pro-democracy movements throughout the Gulf; it finances the pro-imperial, pro-Israel junta in Egypt and it is intervening in Tunisia to ensure that any new regime is “correctly aligned”. It supports a despotic regime in Algeria as well as Israel’s daily assaults on Gaza. In line with this policy, the West backs the uprising of ex-Gaddafites and right-wing monarchists, confident that the ‘liberated’ Libya will once again provide military bases for the US-European military empire-builders.

In contrast, the emerging market-driven global and regional powers have refused to support this conflict, which jeopardizes their access to oil and threatens the current large-scale oil exploration contracts signed with Gaddafi. The growing economies of Germany, China, Russia, Turkey, India and Brazil rely on exploiting new markets and natural resources all over Africa and the Middle East, while the US, Britain and France spend billions pursuing wars that de-stabilize these markets, destroy infrastructure and foment long-term wars of resistance.

The growing market powers recognize that the Libyan “rebels” cannot secure a quick victory or ensure a stable environment for long-term trade and investments. The “rebels”, once in power, will be political clients of their militarist imperial mentors. Clearly, imperial military intervention on behalf of regional separatists seriously threatens these emerging market economies:

The US supports ethno-religious rebels in China’s Tibetan province and as well as the Uyghur separatists; Washington and London have long backed the Chechen separatists in the Russian Caucuses. India is wary of the US military support for Pakistan, which claims Kashmir. Turkey is facing Kurdish separatists who receive arms and safe haven from their US-supplied Iraqi Kurdish counterparts.

The North African precedent of an imperial invasion of Libya on behalf of its separatist clients worries the emerging market-powers. It is also an ongoing threat to the mass-based popular Arab freedom movements. And the invasion sounds the death knell for the US economy and its fragile ‘recovery’: three ongoing, endless wars will break the budget much sooner than later. Most tragic of all, the West’s ‘humanitarian’ invasion has fatally undermined genuine efforts by Libya’s civilian democrats, socialists and nationalists to free their country from both a dictatorship and from imperial-backed reactionaries.

+ + +

Professor Petras' latest books include The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press 2006), Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists and Militants (Clarity Press 2007), Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Clarity Press 2008). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu. Robin Eastman-Abaya is a physician and has been a human rights activist in the Philippines for the past 29 years.

Notes

1. Libyonline.com

2. BBC News, 10/03/2005

3. Halliburtonwatch.com

4. Washington Post, 3/24/11

5. BBC, 9/5/2008

6. FT, March 23, 2011, p. 7

7. Alexander Cockburn: Counterpunch, March 24, 2011

Who killed JFK ?

2011-03-25T02:39:00.001-07:00

After so many years and a variety of often conflicting theories, it seemed the facts behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy would forever remain an unsolved mystery. Fortunately, we may finally have the answers to several key questions surrounding his murder.

M. Wesley Swearingen, a 25-year FBI veteran and world-renowned whistleblower on FBI corruption and wrongdoing, now rips away the veil of secrecy cloaking the FBI’s treasonous actions in the 45-year cover-up of JFK’s assassination. He names Cuban exiles; Chicago Mafia; and bad cops trained by the CIA’s twisted murder conspiracy. Swearingen established his credibility in FBI Secrets: An Agent's Expose, when he documented FBI fraud and dishonesty.

"Names are named, associations are made, reasonable conjectures are served and Swearingen comes across as the real deal," explains a Kirkus Discoveries review. "He virtually dares readers to prove him wrong." A great read!

To Kill A President: Finally---An Ex-FBI Agent rips aside the veil of secrecy that killed JFK

End the Federal Reserve System

2011-03-23T03:47:00.000-07:00

The Federal Reserve and the banking cartel are wrecking the economy. It's time to end the Fed.

St. Patrick

2011-03-16T23:11:00.000-07:00

There are many legends and stories of St. Patrick, but this is his story.

Patrick was born around 385 in Scotland, probably Kilpatrick. His parents were Calpurnius and Conchessa, who were Romans living in Britain in charge of the colonies.

As a boy of fourteen or so, he was captured during a raiding party and taken to Ireland as a slave... to herd and tend sheep. Ireland at this time was a land of Druids and pagans. He learned the language and practices of the people who held him.

During his captivity, he turned to God in prayer. He wrote

"The love of God and his fear grew in me more and more, as did the faith, and my soul was rosed, so that, in a single day, I have said as many as a hundred prayers and in the night, nearly the same." "I prayed in the woods and on the mountain, even before dawn. I felt no hurt from the snow or ice or rain."

Patrick's captivity lasted until he was twenty, when he escaped after having a dream from God in which he was told to leave Ireland by going to the coast. There he found some sailors who took him back to Britain, where he reunited with his family.

He had another dream in which the people of Ireland were calling out to him "We beg you, holy youth, to come and walk among us once more."

He began his studies for the priesthood. He was ordained by St. Germanus, the Bishop of Auxerre, whom he had studied under for years.

Later, Patrick was ordained a bishop, and was sent to take the Gospel to Ireland. He arrived in Ireland March 25, 433, at Slane. One legend says that he met a chieftain of one of the tribes, who tried to kill Patrick. Patrick converted Dichu (the chieftain) after he was unable to move his arm until he became friendly to Patrick.

Patrick began preaching the Gospel throughout Ireland, converting many. He and his disciples preached and converted thousands and began building churches all over the country. Kings, their families, and entire kingdoms converted to Christianity when hearing Patrick's message.

Patrick by now had many disciples, among them Beningnus, Auxilius, Iserninus, and Fiaac, (all later canonized as well).

Patrick preached and converted all of Ireland for 40 years. He worked many miracles and wrote of his love for God in Confessions. After years of living in poverty, traveling and enduring much suffering he died March 17, 461.

He died at Saul, where he had built the first church.

Why a shamrock?
Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Trinity, and has been associated with him and the Irish since that time.

In His Footsteps:
Patrick was a humble, pious, gentle man, whose love and total devotion to and trust in God should be a shining example to each of us. He feared nothing, not even death, so complete was his trust in God, and of the importance of his mission.

(excerpted from Catholic Online)

Saint Patrick stained glass window from Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland, CA.

Doha Debates: WikiLeaks

2011-03-16T07:42:00.000-07:00

The Doha Debates is Qatar's independent forum for free speech and debates the region's most controversial and topical issues. In this debate, speakers for and against WikiLeaks argue it out on stage in front a live audience and are kept in order by the brilliant chair, Tim Sebastian. The debate is most informative and reveals the typical intellectual poverty associated with the anti-WikiLeaks position:

The motion is: This house believes the world is a better place with WikiLeaks
Transcript

Planned Parenthood Exposed

2011-03-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

Messages of Our Lady of Akita to Sr. Agnes

2011-03-13T22:52:00.000-07:00

SR. AGNES SASAGAWA
The Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Sr. Agnes Sasagawa of Akita, Japan

The extraordinary events began on June 12, 1973, when Sr. Agnes saw brilliant mysterious rays emanate suddenly from the tabernacle. The same thing happened on each of the two days that followed.

On June 28, 1973, a cross-shaped wound appeared on the inside left hand of Sr. Agnes. It bled profusely and caused her much pain. On July 6, Sr. Agnes heard a voice coming from the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the chapel where she was praying. The statue was carved from a single block of wood from a Katsura tree and is three feet tall. On the same day, a few of the sisters noticed drops of blood flowing from the statue's right hand. On four occasions, this act of blood flow repeated itself. The wound in the statue's hand remained until September 29, when it disappeared. On September 29, the day the wound on the statue disappeared, the sisters noticed the statue had now begun to "sweat", especially on the forehead and neck. On August 3, Sr. Agnes received a second message. On October 13, she received a final third message.

Two years later on January 4, 1975, the statue of the Blessed Virgin began to weep. It continued to weep at intervals for the next 6 years and eight months. It wept on 101 occasions.

The Messages

Here are the three messages of Our Lady of Akita to Sr. Agnes:

July 6, 1973

"My daughter, my novice, you have obeyed me well in abandoning all to follow me. Is the infirmity of your ears painful? Your deafness will be healed, be sure. Does the wound of your hand cause you to suffer? Pray in reparation for the sins of men. Each person in this community is my irreplaceable daughter. Do you say well the prayer of the Handmaids of the Eucharist? Then, let us pray it together."

"Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, truly present in Holy Eucharist, I consecrate my body and soul to be entirely one with Your Heart, being sacrificed at every instant on all the altars of the world and giving praise to the Father pleading for the coming of His Kingdom."

"Please receive this humble offering of myself. Use me as You will for the glory of the Father and the salvation of souls."

"Most holy Mother of God, never let me be separated from Your Divine Son. Please defend and protect me as Your Special Child. Amen."

When the prayer was finished, the Heavenly Voice said: "Pray very much for the Pope, Bishops, and Priests. Since your Baptism you have always prayed faithfully for them. Continue to pray very much...very much. Tell your superior all that passed today and obey him in everything that he will tell you. He has asked that you pray with fervor."

August 3, 1973

"My daughter, my novice, do you love the Lord? If you love the Lord, listen to what I have to say to you."

"It is very important...You will convey it to your superior."

"Many men in this world afflict the Lord. I desire souls to console Him to soften the anger of the Heavenly Father. I wish, with my Son, for souls who will repair by their suffering and their poverty for the sinners and ingrates."

"In order that the world might know His anger, the Heavenly Father is preparing to inflict a great chastisement on all mankind. With my Son I have intervened so many times to appease the wrath of the Father. I have prevented the coming of calamities by offering Him the sufferings of the Son on the Cross, His Precious Blood, and beloved souls who console Him forming a cohort of victim souls. Prayer, penance and courageous sacrifices can soften the Father's anger. I desire this also from your community...that it love poverty, that it sanctify itself and pray in reparation for the ingratitude and outrages of so many men.

Recite the prayer of the Handmaids of the Eucharist with awareness of its meaning; put it into practice; offer in reparation (whatever God may send) for sins. Let each one endeavor, according to capacity and position, to offer herself entirely to the Lord."

"Even in a secular institute prayer is necessary. Already souls who wish to pray are on the way to being gathered together. Without attaching to much attention to the form, be faithful and fervent in prayer to console the Master."

After a silence:

"Is what you think in your heart true? Are you truly decided to become the rejected stone? My novice, you who wish to belong without reserve to the Lord, to become the spouse worthy of the Spouse, make your vows knowing that you must be fastened to the Cross with three nails. These three nails are poverty, chastity, and obedience. Of the three, obedience is the foundation. In total abandon, let yourself be led by your superior. He will know how to understand you and to direct you."

October 13, 1973

"My dear daughter, listen well to what I have to say to you. You will inform your superior."

After a short silence:

"As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only arms which will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by My Son. Each day recite the prayers of the Rosary. With the Rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops and priests."

"The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres...churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.

"The demon will be especially implacable against souls consecrated to God. The thought of the loss of so many souls is the cause of my sadness. If sins increase in number and gravity, there will be no longer pardon for them"

"With courage, speak to your superior. He will know how to encourage each one of you to pray and to accomplish works of reparation."

"It is Bishop Ito, who directs your community."

And She smiled and then said:

"You have still something to ask? Today is the last time that I will speak to you in living voice. From now on you will obey the one sent to you and your superior."

"Pray very much the prayers of the Rosary. I alone am able still to save you from the calamities which approach. Those who place their confidence in me will be saved."

Church Approves Messages, Weeping Statue As Supernatural

April, 1984—Most. Rev. John Shojiro Ito, Bishop of Niigata, Japan, after years of extensive investigation, declares the events of Akita, Japan to be of supernatural origin, and authorizes throughout the entire diocese the veneration of the Holy Mother of Akita.

On April 22, 1984, after eight years of investigations, after consultation with the Holy See, the messages of Our Lady of Akita were approved by the Bishop of the diocese. In the Japanese village of Akita, a statue of the Madonna, according to the testimony of more than 500 Christians and non-Christians, including the Buddhist mayor of the town, has shed blood, sweat and tears. A nun, Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa has received the stigmata and has received messages from Our Lady.

June, 1988—Vatican City—Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gives definitive judgment on the Akita events and messages as reliable and worthy of belief.

+ + +
Japanese quake's epicenter located near Marian apparition site
Catholic News agency

Recommended reading from Amazon:

Those Who Saw Her: Apparitions of Mary
by Catherine M. Odell

Words of Blessed Mother Teresa

2011-03-13T01:45:00.000-08:00

There are so many religions and each one has its different ways of following God. I follow Christ:
Jesus is my God,
Jesus is my Spouse,
Jesus is my Life,
Jesus is my only Love,
Jesus is my All in All;
Jesus is my Everything.

Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing. Jesus made it very clear. Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me. Give a glass of water, you give it to me. Receive a little child, you receive me. Clear.

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.

There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic. We believe our work should be our example to people. We have among us 475 souls - 30 families are Catholics and the rest are all Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs—all different religions. But they all come to our prayers.

The poor are God's gift; they are our love. Christ will not ask how much we did but how much love we put into what we did. There are many people who are spiritually poor. The spiritual poverty found in Europe, in America is a heavy burden to bear. In these countries it is very difficult to convey a sense of God's love...

The poor are 'hope'. By their courage they truly represent the hope of the world. They have taught us a different way of loving God by making us do our utmost to help them.

Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature—trees, flowers, grass—grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence.... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

We shall pray our work, but we may not substitute our work for prayer. If a sister has missed any community prayer for some reason, she must make up for it.

I do not understand why some people are saying that women and men are exactly the same, and are denying the beautiful differences between men and women. All God's gifts are good, but they are not all the same. As I often say to people who tell me that they would like to serve the poor as I do, "What I can do, you cannot. What you can do, I cannot. But together we can do something beautiful for God." It is just this way with the differences between women and men.

But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.

+ + +

Mother Teresa of Calcutta at EWTN
Mother Teresa: The Person, Religious, and Channel of Grace
by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
Beatification Homily: Mother Teresa
by Pope John Paul II

Recommended reading from Amazon:

Love: A Fruit Always in Season
Daily Meditations by Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light

The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta

Planned Parenthood's Bunnies

2011-02-28T06:30:00.000-08:00

Pope Leo XIII

2011-02-22T12:49:00.000-08:00

This is the oldest known footage of a Pope in existence. This film of Pope Leo XIII was created in 1896. The audio portion is the oldest known audio recording of Pope, also of Pope Leo XIII recorded in 1903. The audio is Pope Leo XIII chanting the Ave Maria in Latin.

Pope Leo XIII (2 March 1810 - 20 July 1903), born Count Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci, was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903 in succession to Pope Pius IX. Reigning until the age of 93, he was the oldest pope, and had the third longest pontificate, behind his immediate predecessor Pius IX and John Paul II. He is known for intellectualism, the development of social teachings with his encyclical Rerum Novarum and his attempts to define the position of the Church with regard to modern thinking.

Read:
Rerum Novarum, Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Capital and Labor.
A biography of Pope Leo XIII from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Mother Teresa speaks for the unborn

2011-01-24T02:11:00.000-08:00

Saturday marked 38 years since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decisions in the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton cases. No greater legal and moral tragedy has been visited upon this country than these combined cases which ran rough-shod over state laws and legalized abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever, including social and economic.

While some states legalized abortion prior to Roe, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling struck down all state laws that limited a woman's access to abortion. Since that time an estimated 52 million prenatal children have been aborted. Yet, amidst the darkness enshrouding America's legally sanctioned culture of death still shines Mother Teresa's 1994 address at a National Prayer Breakfast in defense of a culture of life and love. The words of Mother Teresa remain as timeless wisdom that desperately needs to be heard and heeded.
+ + + + +

WHATEVER YOU DID UNTO ONE OF THE LEAST, YOU DID UNTO ME

An address at the National Prayer Breakfast (Sponsored by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives) February 3, 1994:

On the last day, Jesus will say to those on His right hand, "Come, enter the Kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was sick and you visited me." Then Jesus will turn to those on His left hand and say, "Depart from me because I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink, I was sick and you did not visit me." These will ask Him, "When did we see You hungry, or thirsty or sick and did not come to Your help?" And Jesus will answer them, "Whatever you neglected to do unto one of these least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!"

As we have gathered here to pray together, I think it will be beautiful if we begin with a prayer that expresses very well what Jesus wants us to do for the least. St. Francis of Assisi understood very well these words of Jesus and His life is very well expressed by a prayer. And this prayer, which we say every day after Holy Communion, always surprises me very much, because it is very fitting for each one of us. And I always wonder whether 800 years ago when St. Francis lived, they had the same difficulties that we have today. I think that some of you already have this prayer of peace - so we will pray it together.

Let us thank God for the opportunity He has given us today to have come here to pray together. We have come here especially to pray for peace, joy and love. We are reminded that Jesus came to bring the good news to the poor. He had told us what is that good news when He said: "My peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you." He came not to give the peace of the world which is only that we don't bother each other. He came to give the peace of heart which comes from loving - from doing good to others.

And God loved the world so much that He gave His son - it was a giving. God gave His son to the Virgin Mary, and what did she do with Him? As soon as Jesus came into Mary's life, immediately she went in haste to give that good news. And as she came into the house of her cousin, Elizabeth, Scripture tells us that the unborn child - the child in the womb of Elizabeth - leapt with joy. While still in the womb of Mary - Jesus brought peace to John the Baptist who leapt for joy in the womb of Elizabeth. The unborn was the first one to proclaim the coming of Christ.

And as if that were not enough, as if it were not enough that God the Son should become one of us and bring peace and joy while still in the womb of Mary, Jesus also died on the Cross to show that greater love. He died for you and for me, and for the leper and for that man dying of hunger and that naked person lying in the street, no only of Calcutta, but of Africa, and everywhere. Our Sisters serve these poor people in 105 countries throughout the world. Jesus insisted that we love one another as He loves each one of us. Jesus gave His life to love us and He tells us that we also have to give whatever it takes to do good to one another. And in the Gospel Jesus says very clearly: "Love as I have loved you."

Jesus died on the Cross because that is what it took for Him to do good to us - to save us from our selfishness in sin. He gave up everything to do the Father's will - to show us that we too must be willing to give up everything to do God's will - to love one another as He loves each of us. If we are not willing to give whatever it takes to do good to one another, sin is still in us. That is why we too must give to each other until it hurts.

It is not enough for us to say: "I love God," but I also have to love my neighbor. St. John says that you are a liar if you say you love God and you don't love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live? And so it is very important for us to realize that love, to be true, has to hurt. I must be willing to give whatever it takes not to harm other people and, in fact, to do good to them. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is not true love in me and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me.

It hurt Jesus to love us. We have been created in His image for greater things, to love and to be loved. We must "put on Christ" as Scripture tells us. And so, we have been created to love as He loves us. Jesus makes Himself the hungry one, the naked one, the homeless one, the unwanted one, and He says, "You did it to Me." On the last day He will say to those on His right, "whatever you did to the least of these, you did to Me, and He will also say to those on His left, whatever you neglected to do for the least of these, you neglected to do it for Me."

When He was dying on the Cross, Jesus said, "I thirst." Jesus is thirsting for our love, and this is the thirst of everyone, poor and rich alike. We all thirst for the love of others, that they go out of their way to avoid harming us and to do good to us. This is the meaning of true love, to give
until it hurts.

I can never forget the experience I had in visiting a home where they kept all these old parents of sons and daughters who had just put them into an institution and forgotten them - maybe. I saw that in that home these old people had everything - good food, comfortable place, television, everything, but everyone was looking toward the door. And I did not see a single one with a smile on the face. I turned to Sister and I asked: "Why do these people who have every comfort here, why are they all looking toward the door? Why are they not smiling?"

I am so used to seeing the smiles on our people, even the dying ones smile. And Sister said: "This is the way it is nearly everyday. They are expecting, they are hoping that a son or daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten." And see, this neglect to love brings spiritual poverty. Maybe in our own family we have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried. Are we there? Are we willing to give until it hurts in order to be with our families, or do we put our own interests first? These are the questions we must ask ourselves, especially as we begin this year of the family. We must remember that love begins at home and we must also remember that 'the future of humanity passes through the family.'

I was surprised in the West to see so many young boys and girls given to drugs. And I tried to find out why. Why is it like that, when those in the West have so many more things than those in the East? And the answer was: 'Because there is no one in the family to receive them.' Our children depend on us for everything - their health, their nutrition, their security, their coming to know and love God. For all of this, they look to us with trust, hope and expectation. But often father and mother are so busy they have no time for their children, or perhaps they are not even married or have given up on their marriage. So their children go to the streets and get involved in drugs or other things. We are talking of love of the child, which is were love and peace must begin. These are the things that break peace.

But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.

Many people are very, very concerned with the children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about all the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions who are being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today - abortion which brings people to such blindness.

And for this I appeal in India and I appeal everywhere - "Let us bring the child back." The child is God's gift to the family. Each child is created in the special image and likeness of God for greater things - to love and to be loved. In this year of the family we must bring the child back to the center of our care and concern. This is the only way that our world can survive because our children are the only hope for the future. As older people are called to God, only their children can take their places.

But what does God say to us? He says: "Even if a mother could forget her child, I will not forget you. I have carved you in the palm of my hand." We are carved in the palm of His hand; that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God from conception and is called by God to love and loved, not only now in this life, but forever. God can never forget us.

The beautiful gift God has given our congregation is to fight abortion by adoption. We have already, from our house in Calcutta, over 3,000 children adoption. And I can't tell you what joy, what love, what peace those children have brought into those families. It has been a real gift of God for them and for us. I remember one of the little ones was very sick, so I sent for the father and the mother and I asked them: "Please give me back the sick child. I will give you a healthy one." And the father looked at me and said, "Mother Teresa, take my life first than take the child." So beautiful to see it--so much love, so much joy that little one has brought into that family. So pray for us that we continue this beautiful gift. And also I offer you--our Sisters are here--anybody who doesn't want the child, please give it to me. I want the child.

I will tell you something beautiful. We are fighting abortion by adoption - by care of the mother and adoption for her baby. We have saved thousands of lives. We have sent word to the clinics, to the hospitals and police stations: "Please don't destroy the child; we will take the child." So we always have someone tell the mothers in trouble: "Come, we will take care of you, we will get a home for your child." And we have a tremendous demand from couples who cannot have a child - but I never give a child to a couple who have done something not to have a child. Jesus said, "Anyone who receives a child in my name, receives me." By adopting a child, these couples receive Jesus but, by aborting a child, a couple refuses to receive Jesus.

Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child. From our children's home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3000 children from abortion. These children have brought such love and joy to their adopting parents and have grown up so full of love and joy.

I know that couples have to plan their family and for that there is natural family planning. The way to plan the family is natural family planning, not contraception. In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self. This turns the attention to self and so it destroys the gifts of love in him or her.In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other as happens in natural family planning, and not to self, as happens in contraception. Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows very easily.

I also know that there are great problems in the world - that many spouses do not love each other enough to practice natural family planning. We cannot solve all the problems in the world, but let us never bring in the worst problem of all, and that is to destroy love. And this is what happens when we tell people to practice contraception and abortion.

The poor are very great people. They can teach us so many beautiful things. Once one of them came to thank us for teaching her natural family planning and said: "You people who have practiced chastity, you are the best people to teach us natural family planning because it is nothing more than self-control out of love for each other." And what this poor person said is very true. These poor people maybe have nothing to eat, maybe they have not a home to live in, but they can still be great people when they are spiritually rich.

When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread. But a person who is shut out, who feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person who has been thrown out of society - that spiritual poverty is much harder to overcome. And abortion, which often follows from contraception, brings a people to be spiritually poor, and that is the worst poverty and the most difficult to overcome.

Those who are materially poor can be very wonderful people. One evening we went out and we picked up four people from the street. And one of them was in a most terrible condition. I told the Sisters: "You take care of the other three; I will take care of the one who looks worse." So I did for her all that my love can do. I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face. She took hold of my hand, as she said one word only: "thank you" - and she died.

I could not help but examine my conscience before her. And I asked: "What would I say if I were in her place?" And my answer was very simple. I would have tried to draw a little attention to myself. I would have said: "I am hungry, I am dying, I am cold, I am in pain," or something. But she gave me much more - she gave me her grateful love. And she died with a smile on her face. Then there was the man we picked up from the drain, half eaten by worms and, after we had brought him to the home, he only said, "I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die as an angel, loved and cared for." Then, after we had removed all the worms from his body, all he said, with a big smile, was: "Sister, I am going home to God" - and he died. It was so wonderful to see the greatness of that man who could speak like that without blaming anybody, without comparing anything. Like an angel - this is the greatness of people who are spiritually rich even when they are materially poor.

We are not social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of some people, but we must be contemplatives in the heart of the world. For we must bring that presence of God into your family, for the family that prays together, stays together. There is so much hatred, so much misery, and we with our prayer, with our sacrifice, are beginning at home. Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put into what we do.

If we are contemplatives in the heart of the world with all its problems, these problems can never discourage us. We must always remember what God ells us in Scripture: "Even if a mother could forget the child in her womb" - something impossible, but even if she could forget - "I will never forget you."

And so here I am talking with you. I want you to find the poor here, right in your own home first. And begin love there. Be that good news to your own people first. And find out about your next-door neighbors. Do you know who they are?

I had the most extraordinary experience of love of neighbor with a Hindu family. A gentleman came to our house and said: "Mother Teresa, there is a family who have not eaten for so long. Do something." So I took some rice and went there immediately. And I saw the children - their eyes shining with hunger. I don't know if you have ever seen hunger. But I have seen it very often. And the mother of the family took the rice I gave her and went out. When she came back, I asked her: "Where did you go? What did you do?" And she gave me a very simple answer: "They are hungry also." What struck me was that she knew - and who are they? A Muslim family - and she knew. I didn't bring any more rice that evening because I wanted them, Hindus and Muslims, to enjoy the joy of sharing.

But there were those children, radiating joy, sharing the joy and peace with their mother because she had the love to give until it hurts. And you see this is where love begins - at home in the family.

So, as the example of this family shows, God will never forget us and there is something you and I can always do. We can keep the joy of loving Jesus in our hearts, and share that joy with all we come in contact with. Let us make that one point - that no child will be unwanted, unloved, uncared for, or killed and thrown away. And give until it hurts - with a smile.

As you know, we have a number of homes here in the United States, where people need tender love and care. This is the joy of sharing. Come and share. We have the young people suffering with AIDS. They need that tender love and care. But such beautiful--I've never yet seen a young man or anybody displeased or angry or frightened, really going home to God. Such a beautiful smile, always. So let us pray that we have the gift of sharing the joy with others and giving until it hurts.

Because I talk so much of giving with a smile, once a professor from the United States asked me: "Are you married?" And I said: "Yes, and I find it sometimes very difficult to smile at my spouse, Jesus, because He can be very demanding - sometimes." This is really something true. And this is where love comes in - when it is demanding, and yet we can give it with joy.

One of the most demanding things for me is traveling everywhere - and with publicity. I have said to Jesus that if I don't go to heaven for anything else, I will be going to heaven for all the traveling with all the publicity, because it has purified me and sacrificed me and made me really ready to go home to God.

If we remember that God loves us, and that we can love others as He loves us, then America can become a sign of peace for the world. From here, a sign of care for the weakest of the weak - the unborn child - must go out to the world. If you become a burning light of justice and peace in the world, then really you will be true to what the founders of this country stood for.

Let us love one another as God loves each one of us. And where does this love begin? In our own home. How does it begin? By praying together Prayer for us that we continue God's work with great love. The sisters, the brothers, and the fathers and the lay missionaries of Charity and co-workers: we are all one heart full of love, that we may bring that joy of love everywhere we go. And my prayer for you is that through this love for one another, for this peace and joy in the family, that you may grow in holiness. Holiness is not the luxury of the few; it is a simply duty, for you and for me, because Jesus has very clearly stated, "Be ye holy as my father in heaven is holy." So let us pray for each other that we grow in love for each other, and through this love become holy as Jesus wants us to be for he died out of love for us.

One day I met a lady who was dying of cancer in a most terrible condition. And I told her, I say, "You know, this terrible pain is only the kiss of Jesus--a sign that you have come so close to Jesus on the cross that he can kiss you." And she joined her hands together and said, "Mother Teresa, please tell Jesus to stop kissing me."

So pray for us that we continue God's work with great love and I will pray for you, for all your families. And also I want to thank the families who have been so generous in giving their daughters to us to consecrate their life to Jesus by the vow of poverty, chastity, obedience, and by giving wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor. This is our fourth vow in our congregation. And we have a novitiate in San Francisco where we have many beautiful vocations who are wanting to give their whole life to Jesus in the service of the poorest of the poor.
So once more I thank you for giving you children to God. And pray for us that we continue God's work with great love.

God bless you all!

Pope John Paul II update

2011-01-13T08:07:00.000-08:00

Just a quick announcement to say the beatification of Pope John Paul II is moving right along...

Vatican analyst reports approval of beatification for Pope John Paul II

Vatican City, Jan 12, 2011 / 02:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Vatican officials have concluded that a miraculous healing credited to the intercession of Pope John Paul II is authentic.

The decision clears the way for the Church to declare the late Pope “blessed,” the final stage on the road to sainthood. The Pope’s beatification could take place as early as April 2, the sixth anniversary of his death, according to veteran Vatican analyst Andrea Tornielli, who broke the news in the Jan. 12 edition of the Italian newspaper, Il Giornale.

Tornielli reported that cardinals and bishops from the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints had convened Jan. 11 and "examined and approved the miracle attributed to the intercession of John Paul II.”

The case involves the healing of a French religious sister from Parkinson's disease. Doctors had diagnosed Sister Marie Simon-Pierre with the condition in 2001. Her fellow sisters had prayed for the late Pope's intercession, however it was not until Sister Simon-Pierre wrote the pontiff’s name on a paper one night in June 2005 that the miracle occurred.

She was cured by the next morning and immediately took up her work as a nurse in a maternity ward.

Read the rest of the story

Obama: No Whistleblowing on My Watch

2011-01-08T03:51:00.000-08:00

Source: CommonDreams.org
The US Military Should Be Ashamed of Its Treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning
by Ann Wright

Candidate Obama said "Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal."

As a U.S. presidential candidate in 2008, in referring to the Bush Administration's use of phone companies to illegally spy on Americans, Barack Obama said, "We only know these crimes took place because insiders blew the whistle at great personal risk ... Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal." Candidate Obama was referring to the Bush Administration's use of phone companies to illegally spy on Americans.

President Obama says No whistleblowing on my watch!

Yet, Obama, as he has on so many issues as President, is taking a 180 degree turn from his comments as a candidate, comments on which the American people relied and elected him.

Now, the Obama administration's warning to Bradley Manning and to other whistle blowers is this: blow the whistle on government criminal actions and we will put you in solitary confinement before you are charged, much less go to trial. You will be treated as an "enemy combatant," in America's ongoing wars on about everything, including the truth.

Evidence of Murder of Civilians in Iraq by US military helicopter pilots

Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army Private First Class (PFC) intelligence analyst who turned 23 years old in late December, allegedly leaked a video of a US helicopter attack that killed at least eleven Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters reporters, to the website Wikileaks. Two Iraqi children were also severely wounded in the attack.

PFC Manning's alleged actions are just as important as those of the whistleblowers who informed us of the Bush administration's use of phone companies to illegally spy on Americans. The video taken from the U.S. military helicopter that fired the killing rounds of ammunition, graphically showed US military pilots firing on and killing innocent civilians in Iraq. In addition to this "Collateral Murder" video, PFC Manning is suspected by the government of leaking the "Afghan War Diaries" - tens of thousands of battlefield reports that explicitly describe civilian deaths and cover-ups, corrupt officials, collusion with warlords, and a failing US/NATO war effort.

Manning had the legal responsibility to disclose evidence, even classified evidence, of criminal actions conducted by government officials

If indeed, Manning did give the video to Wikileaks, his actions show clearly that he reasonably believed that war crimes were being covered up, and that he took action based on that belief. Exposing criminal actions done under the cover of government orders is a responsibility and duty of military personnel as codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as the Geneva conventions and the Nuremberg Principles.

Nuremberg Principle I

Principle I states, "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment."

Principle II

Principle II states, "The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law."

Principle III

Principle III states, "The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law."

Principle IV

Principle IV states: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him".

This principle could be paraphrased as follows: "It is not an acceptable excuse to say 'I was just following my superior's orders'".

Classifying the evidence of criminal actions does not make the actions untouchable

Reporting criminal actions done by others and providing evidence of those criminal actions, especially when the evidence of criminal actions have been covered up by "classifying" the evidence, is not illegal, but in fact, is a very brave response.

Punishment before the Trial-Solitary Confinement

Manning has now been in prison in solitary confinement for 7 months and still neither the U.S. military nor the U.S. government has indicted him for any offense. Manning essentially is being treated by the U.S. government as an American citizen "enemy combatant."

Manning's treatment in detention, pre-trial confinement in prison is cruel and unusual. He is being kept in solitary confinement, alone in a cell for 23 hours a day. He is forbidden to exercise in his cell. He is deprived of sleep. He is not given a pillow or sheets for his steel bed, although recently after publicity about he conditions in the prison, he was given a mattress for the bed. Prison medical personnel now "administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation."

US Soldier Treated as Those Detained in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo

The U.S. military's treatment of Manning is tragically consistent with its treatment of persons detained in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. America's military uses harsh conditions and torture, physical or mental, for those who have not been convicted of any crimes used to break the person to provide whatever information the military wants to receive. This type of treatment is inhumane, immoral and wrong for those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo and is wrong for Bradley Manning.

Nothing to be Proud of

Nothing in this to be proud of, President Obama. Nothing in this to be proud of, US Military.

If you, the reader, are offended by this, please -- Raise Hell for Bradley, the undeclared American "enemy combatant."

Contribute to Manning's defense fund at www.couragetoresist.org

* Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book "Dissent: Voices of Conscience." (www.voicesofconscience.com)

John Pilger: Julian Assange Interview

2011-01-02T13:19:00.000-08:00

An extended interview with Julian Assange recorded during filming of John Pilger's latest film 'The War You Don't See'.

Visit johnpilger.com

Gold and Economic Freedom

2010-12-24T19:06:00.000-08:00

Will the real Alan Greenspan please stand up! During 1966, Greenspan wrote an impeccable defense of the gold standard in an article titled, Gold and Economic Freedom. At some point since, Greenspan turned statist. Yet, while as the economy meddling chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Greenspan said he would not change a single word of that 1966 article. (See “End the Fed” by Ron Paul)

How do we explain the irreconciable contradiction that is Alan Greenspan? Perhaps the answer is that most people have their price. So what price persuaded Greenspan to sell out on that which he knows is true about the gold standard?

Whatever Greenspan’s personal motives may be, I would like to draw attention to his article, Gold and Economic Freedom -- because it is still as good as gold...

Gold and Economic Freedom
by Alan Greenspan

An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense - perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire - that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.

In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society.

Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium of exchange, is universally acceptable to all participants in an exchange economy as payment for their goods or services, and can, therefore, be used as a standard of market value and as a store of value, i.e., as a means of saving.

The existence of such a commodity is a precondition of a division of labor economy. If men did not have some commodity of objective value which was generally acceptable as money, they would have to resort to primitive barter or be forced to live on self-sufficient farms and forgo the inestimable advantages of specialization. If men had no means to store value, i.e., to save, neither long-range planning nor exchange would be possible.

What medium of exchange will be acceptable to all participants in an economy is not determined arbitrarily. First, the medium of exchange should be durable. In a primitive society of meager wealth, wheat might be sufficiently durable to serve as a medium, since all exchanges would occur only during and immediately after the harvest, leaving no value-surplus to store. But where store-of-value considerations are important, as they are in richer, more civilized societies, the medium of exchange must be a durable commodity, usually a metal. A metal is generally chosen because it is homogeneous and divisible: every unit is the same as every other and it can be blended or formed in any quantity. Precious jewels, for example, are neither homogeneous nor divisible. More important, the commodity chosen as a medium must be a luxury. Human desires for luxuries are unlimited and, therefore, luxury goods are always in demand and will always be acceptable. Wheat is a luxury in underfed civilizations, but not in a prosperous society. Cigarettes ordinarily would not serve as money, but they did in post-World War II Europe where they were considered a luxury. The term "luxury good" implies scarcity and high unit value. Having a high unit value, such a good is easily portable; for instance, an ounce of gold is worth a half-ton of pig iron.

In the early stages of a developing money economy, several media of exchange might be used, since a wide variety of commodities would fulfill the foregoing conditions. However, one of the commodities will gradually displace all others, by being more widely acceptable. Preferences on what to hold as a store of value, will shift to the most widely acceptable commodity, which, in turn, will make it still more acceptable. The shift is progressive until that commodity becomes the sole medium of exchange. The use of a single medium is highly advantageous for the same reasons that a money economy is superior to a barter economy: it makes exchanges possible on an incalculably wider scale.

Whether the single medium is gold, silver, seashells, cattle, or tobacco is optional, depending on the context and development of a given economy. In fact, all have been employed, at various times, as media of exchange. Even in the present century, two major commodities, gold and silver, have been used as international media of exchange, with gold becoming the predominant one. Gold, having both artistic and functional uses and being relatively scarce, has significant advantages over all other media of exchange. Since the beginning of World War I, it has been virtually the sole international standard of exchange. If all goods and services were to be paid for in gold, large payments would be difficult to execute and this would tend to limit the extent of a society's divisions of labor and specialization. Thus a logical extension of the creation of a medium of exchange is the development of a banking system and credit instruments (bank notes and deposits) which act as a substitute for, but are convertible into, gold.

A free banking system based on gold is able to extend credit and thus to create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the production requirements of the economy. Individual owners of gold are induced, by payments of interest, to deposit their gold in a bank (against which they can draw checks). But since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves. This enables the banker to loan out more than the amount of his gold deposits (which means that he holds claims to gold rather than gold as security of his deposits). But the amount of loans which he can afford to make is not arbitrary: he has to gauge it in relation to his reserves and to the status of his investments.

When banks loan money to finance productive and profitable endeavors, the loans are paid off rapidly and bank credit continues to be generally available. But when the business ventures financed by bank credit are less profitable and slow to pay off, bankers soon find that their loans outstanding are excessive relative to their gold reserves, and they begin to curtail new lending, usually by charging higher interest rates. This tends to restrict the financing of new ventures and requires the existing borrowers to improve their profitability before they can obtain credit for further expansion. Thus, under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy's stability and balanced growth. When gold is accepted as the medium of exchange by most or all nations, an unhampered free international gold standard serves to foster a world-wide division of labor and the broadest international trade. Even though the units of exchange (the dollar, the pound, the franc, etc.) differ from country to country, when all are defined in terms of gold the economies of the different countries act as one-so long as there are no restraints on trade or on the movement of capital. Credit, interest rates, and prices tend to follow similar patterns in all countries. For example, if banks in one country extend credit too liberally, interest rates in that country will tend to fall, inducing depositors to shift their gold to higher-interest paying banks in other countries. This will immediately cause a shortage of bank reserves in the "easy money" country, inducing tighter credit standards and a return to competitively higher interest rates again.

A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World War I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.

But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank reserves was causing business decline-argued economic interventionists-why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely-it was claimed-there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1913. It consisted of twelve regional Federal Reserve banks nominally owned by private bankers, but in fact government sponsored, controlled, and supported. Credit extended by these banks is in practice (though not legally) backed by the taxing power of the federal government. Technically, we remained on the gold standard; individuals were still free to own gold, and gold continued to be used as bank reserves. But now, in addition to gold, credit extended by the Federal Reserve banks ("paper reserves") could serve as legal tender to pay depositors.

When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates. The "Fed" succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market-triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's.

With a logic reminiscent of a generation earlier, statists argued that the gold standard was largely to blame for the credit debacle which led to the Great Depression. If the gold standard had not existed, they argued, Britain's abandonment of gold payments in 1931 would not have caused the failure of banks all over the world. (The irony was that since 1913, we had been, not on a gold standard, but on what may be termed "a mixed gold standard"; yet it is gold that took the blame.) But the opposition to the gold standard in any form-from a growing number of welfare-state advocates-was prompted by a much subtler insight: the realization that the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state). Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.

Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy's tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government's promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited. The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created paper reserves in the form of government bonds which-through a complex series of steps-the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if they were an actual deposit, i.e., as the equivalent of what was formerly a deposit of gold. The holder of a government bond or of a bank deposit created by paper reserves believes that he has a valid claim on a real asset. But the fact is that there are now more claims outstanding than real assets. The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy's books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed by bank credit expansion.

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.

(Greenspan's article originally appeared in a newsletter, “The Objectivist” published in 1966. It was reprinted in Ayn Rand's “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.”)

Defend Bradley Manning

2010-12-21T23:55:00.000-08:00

American Soldiers Should Be First in Line To Defend Bradley Manning
by Andrew Mason and Mark R. Crovelli
Source: LewRockwell.com

One of the most curious facets of the ongoing Wikileaks saga is the conspicuous silence of the American military about the Bradley Manning case. The military’s silence is absolutely deafening, for example, on the pages of Stars and Stripes, where only two articles in the turbulent month of December have even deigned to mention Mr. Manning. One would expect that, in a case involving the largest leak of classified documents in the history of the world, the armed forces would be staking out a concrete position on this case for the entire world, and especially the armed forces, to see. After all, it was one of the armed forces’ own who allegedly released the documents to Wikileaks, and other active-duty servicemen with access to classified documents may be considering doing the very same thing as Manning.

This silence emanating from the armed forces regarding Manning raises a fascinating and important question: What position should the armed forces take with regard to the Manning case? We all know what stance the Pentagon is likely to take, given that many of the embarrassing documents actually refer to people in the Pentagon, but the question that truly needs to be answered concerns the position the armed forces should take – especially the position that average soldiers should take on Bradley Manning.

The answer, it turns out, cannot be discovered by facilely pointing out that it is illegal under military law for soldiers to release classified information to the public. This is true, because the document classification system has been manipulated by political and military elites in a way that is extremely prejudicial to average soldiers. Ironically, this fact has itself been revealed by the Wikileaks releases, because it is clear that political and military elites are over-classifying documents in order to protect their own asses. They have been classifying documents "secret" even when they involve nothing more than gossip about foreign diplomats and royalty, for example. Peruse the Wikileaks files for two minutes and you will get a good sense of just how absurd the document classification system in the United States has become.

Insofar as the document classification system in the U.S. has been absurdly extended and abused, this has created a serious moral problem for conscientious soldiers in the armed forces. For, by over-classifying documents, political and military elites are able to hamstring their subordinates and make the exposure of what they are doing virtually impossible, unless it is leaked. Any unsavory, illegal, untruthful or even just plain embarrassing information can be hidden from public view simply by stamping the offensive document "secret." It is also a way for political and military elites to avoid prosecution for crimes in the United States by claiming that their defense involves "sensitive" or "secret" documents that cannot be revealed in open court. This strategy is so common in our corrupted day and age that it even has a name: "greymail."

In essence, then, the document classification system in the United States has warped into an instrument of intimidation against average, conscientious soldiers who might be appalled by their superiors’ words or deeds. Superior officers and civilian bureaucrats can preempt dissent by simply stamping incriminating documents "secret," and use that tiny word as a threat against conscientious soldiers that they had better keep their mouths shut – or else. This threat is all the more unconscionable while two wars are going on that are killing average American soldiers, not political and military elites, in droves. When lies are used to get American soldiers killed, and soldiers are intimidated to preempt the exposure of those lies, you have a recipe for tragedy on a massive scale.

It is important to bear in mind, moreover, that we are not talking about documents upon which the safety of the United States rests. No high-ranking officers would be stupid or reckless enough to share such sensitive documents with low-level officers and enlistees. If they were that mind bogglingly idiotic, then the entire Pentagon and officer corps ought to be forced to resign for incompetence immediately. In addition, the fact that people in Washington routinely leak documents to the press that are far more sensitive to national security than those Manning released, like the National Intelligence Estimate, testifies to the existence of a revolting double standard being applied to political and military elites as compared to the standard being applied to average soldiers like Mr. Manning.

Bearing these observations in mind, it ought to be obvious that average soldiers should celebrate Bradley Manning as a hero who stood up to this unconscionable intimidation from above. He didn’t just reveal to the world that the upper echelons of the political and military establishment are engaged in outright crimes and deception; he revealed and took a stand against conscientious soldiers being silenced by asinine document over-classification. He is, in other words, a defender of the honor and integrity of the average soldier and the Army’s own core values, which stands in stark contrast to the depravity of the political and military elites that we meet in the Wikileaks documents, and who are now trampling on the constitution even in their detention of Mr. Manning.

Thus, average soldiers ought to be the first in line to defend Bradley Manning. They ought to insist that he only be punished if it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the documents he released were indeed of vital importance to the security of the United States. If this cannot be proven, then Mr. Manning ought to be immediately and unconditionally released. (Proving this in Mr. Manning’s case will be extremely difficult, however, given that Defense Secretary Gates has already asserted that the documents have harmed no one, and the fact that the Pentagon didn’t even think it necessary to redact names from the documents). The assumption going forward, now that we know for a fact that documents are being over-classified in abundance by political and military elites, is that any released document is not vital to national security until conclusively proven otherwise. If average soldiers were to operate under this assumption, moreover, political and military elites would be forced to take the time to actually hide any truly sensitive documents from the view of hundreds of thousands of people, as they should have been doing from day one.

It was long overdue for someone to stand up against the practice of over-classifying documents in order to intimidate average soldiers. Bradley Manning has courageously done so, and all members of the armed forces should rejoice for it.

December 22, 2010

Andrew Mason is a former corporal in the U.S.M.C. Mark R. Crovelli [send him mail] writes from Denver, Colorado.

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Masters of War

2010-12-21T14:40:00.000-08:00

WikiLeaks exposes the masters of war; the Empire has struck back with persecution and the dubious accusation that WikiLeaks endangers lives. However, Congressman Ron Paul asks, "Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths; lying us into war, or WikiLeaks’ revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?" And, "Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on WikiLeaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?"

Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain.

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion'
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins.

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do.

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead.

The God in the Cave by G.K. Chesterton

2010-12-19T05:52:00.000-08:00

Traditions in art and literature and popular fable have quite sufficiently attested, as has been said, this particular paradox of the divine being in the cradle. Perhaps they have not so clearly emphasised the significance of the divine being in the cave. Curiously enough, indeed, tradition has not very clearly emphasised the cave. It is a familiar fact that the Bethlehem scene has been represented in every possible setting of time and country of landscape and architecture; and it is a wholly happy and admirable fact that men have conceived it as quite different according to their different individual traditions and tastes. But while all have realised that it was a stable, not so many have realised that it was a cave. Some critics have even been so silly as to suppose that there was some contradiction between the stable and the cave; in which case they cannot know much about caves or stables in Palestine. As they see differences that are not there it is needless to add that they do not see differences that are there. When a well-known critic says, for instance, that Christ being born in a rocky cavern is like Mithras having sprung alive out of a rock, it sounds like a parody upon comparative religion. There is such a thing as the point of a story, even if it is a story in the sense of a lie. And the notion of a hero appearing, like Pallas from the brain of Zeus, mature and without a mother, is obviously the very opposite of the idea of a god being born like an ordinary baby and entirely dependent on a mother.

Whichever ideal we might prefer, we should surely see that they are contrary ideals. It is as stupid to connect them because they both contain a substance called stone as to identify the punishment of the Deluge with the baptism in the Jordan because they both contain a substance called water. Whether as a myth or a mystery, Christ was obviously conceived as born in a hole in the rocks primarily because it marked the position of one outcast and homeless....

It would be vain to attempt to say anything adequate, or anything new, about the change which this conception of a deity born like an outcast or even an outlaw had upon the whole conception of law and its duties to the poor and outcast. It is profoundly true to say that after that moment there could be no slaves. There could be and were people bearing that legal title, until the Church was strong enough to weed them out, but there could be no more of the pagan repose in the mere advantage to the state of keeping it a servile state. Individuals became important, in a sense in which no instruments can be important. A man could not be a means to an end, at any rate to any other man's end. All this popular and fraternal element in the story has been rightly attached by tradition to the episode of the Shepherds; the hinds who found themselves talking face to face with the princes of heaven. But there is another aspect of the popular element as represented by the shepherds which has not perhaps been so fully developed; and which is more directly relevant here.

Men of the people, like the shepherds, men of the popular tradition, had everywhere been the makers of the mythologies. It was they who had felt most directly, with least check or chill from philosophy or the corrupt cults of civilisation, the need we have already considered; the images that were adventures of the imagination; the mythology that was a sort of search; the tempting and tantalising hints of something half-human in nature; the dumb significance of seasons and special places. They had best understood that the soul of a landscape is a story, and the soul of a story is a personality. But rationalism had already begun to rot away these really irrational though imaginative treasures of the peasant; even as a systematic slavery had eaten the peasant out of house and home. Upon all such peasantries everywhere there was descending a dusk and twilight of disappointment, in the hour when these few men discovered what they sought. Everywhere else Arcadia was fading from the forest. Pan was dead and the shepherds were scattered like sheep. And though no man knew it, the hour was near which was to end and to fulfil all things; and, though no man heard it, there was one far-off cry in an unknown tongue upon the heaving wilderness of the mountains. The shepherds had found their Shepherd.

And the thing they found was of a kind with the things they sought. The populace had been wrong in many things; but they had not been wrong in believing that holy things could have a habitation and that divinity need not disdain the limits of time and space. And the barbarian who conceived the crudest fancy about the sun being stolen and hidden in a box, or the wildest myth about the god being rescued and his enemy deceived with a stone, was nearer to the secret of the cave and knew more about the crisis of the world, than all those in the circle of cities round the Mediterranean who had become content with cold abstractions or cosmopolitan generalisations; than all those who were spinning thinner and thinner threads of thought out of the transcendentalism of Plato or the orientalism of Pythagoras. The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic; it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true. Since that hour no mythologies have been made in the world. Mythology is a search....

The philosophers had also heard. It is still a strange story, though an old one, how they came out of orient lands, crowned with the majesty of kings and clothed with something of the mystery of magicians. That truth that is tradition has wisely remembered them almost as unknown quantities, as mysterious as their mysterious and melodious names; Melchior, Caspar, Balthazar. But there came with them all that world of wisdom that had watched the stars in Chaldea and the sun in Persia; and we shall not be wrong if we see in them the same curiosity that moves all the sages. They would stand for the same human ideal if their names had really been Confucius or Pythagoras or Plato. They were those who sought not tales but the truth of things; and since their thirst for truth was itself a thirst for God, they also have had their reward. But even in order to understand that reward, we must understand that for philosophy as much as mythology, that reward was the completion of the incomplete....

The Magi, who stand for mysticism and philosophy, are truly conceived as seeking something new and even as finding something unexpected. That sense of crisis which still tingles in the Christmas story and even in every Christmas celebration, accentuates the idea of a search and a discovery. For the other mystical figures in the miracle play, for the angel and the mother, the shepherds and the soldiers of Herod, there may be aspects both simpler and more supernatural, more elemental or more emotional. But the Wise Men must be seeking wisdom; and for them there must be a light also in the intellect. And this is the light; that the Catholic creed is catholic and that nothing else is catholic. The philosophy of the Church is universal. The philosophy of the philosophers was not universal. Had Plato and Pythagoras and Aristotle stood for an instant in the light that came out of that little cave, they would have known that their own light was not universal. It is far from certain, indeed, that they did not know it already. Philosophy also, like mythology, had very much the air of a search. It is the realisation of this truth that gives its traditional majesty and mystery to the figures of the Three Kings; the discovery that religion is broader than philosophy and that this is the broadest of religions, contained within this narrow space....

We might well be content to say that mythology had come with the shepherds and philosophy with the philosophers; and that it only remained for them to combine in the recognisation of religion. But there was a third element that must not be ignored and one which that religion for ever refuses to ignore, in any revel or reconciliation. There was present in the primary scenes of the drama that Enemy that had rotted the legends with lust and frozen the theories into atheism, but which answered the direct challenge with something of that more direct method which we have seen in the conscious cult of the demons. In the description of that demon-worship, of the devouring detestation of innocence shown in the works of its witchcraft and the most inhuman of its human sacrifice, I have said less of its indirect and secret penetration of the saner paganism; the soaking of mythological imagination with sex; the rise of imperial pride into insanity. But both the indirect and the direct influence make themselves felt in the drama of Bethlehem. A ruler under the Roman suzerainty, probably equipped and surrounded with the Roman ornament and order though himself of eastern blood, seems in that hour to have felt stirring within him the spirit of strange things. We all know the story of how Herod, alarmed at some rumour of a mysterious rival, remembered the wild gesture of the capricious despots of Asia and ordered a massacre of suspects of the new generation of the populace. Everyone knows the story; but not everyone has perhaps noted its place in the story of the strange religions of men. Not everybody has seen the significance even of its very contrast with the Corinthian columns and Roman pavement of that conquered and superficially civilised world. Only, as the purpose in this dark spirit began to show and shine in the eyes of the Idumean, a seer might perhaps have seen something like a great grey ghost that looked over his shoulder; have seen behind him filling the dome of night and hovering for the last time over history, that vast and fearful fact that was Moloch of the Carthaginians; awaiting his last tribute from a ruler of the races of Shem. The demons in that first festival of Christmas, feasted also in their own fashion.

135 arrests in DC and that's not news

2010-12-17T23:04:00.000-08:00

From the Madison Independent Examiner
December 17, 2010

About 135 people were arrested yesterday in an anti-war protest outside the White House. This came as President Obama was revealing a new report that touted progress in the war in Afghanistan. Thanks to our diligent, informative, corporate media, this act of civil disobediance and arrests apparently are not news.

Those arrested included Pulitzer prize-winning war correspondent, Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon papers, retired 27-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern, FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley, as well as several members of Veterans for Peace.

The anti-war protest, organized by Veterans for Peace, began at 10 am yesterday in Lafayette Park with a series of speeches on the importance of civil resistance delivered to several hundred participants in frigid weather. After the rally, activists formed a solemn single-file process to the White House, silent except for a drum beat. When they encountered police barricades there, some veterans began climbing over them, until the police opened up the barricades, allowing people to approach the fence in front of the White House.

At about 12:30 pm, police began arresting protesters who remained along the fence, several of whom had chained themselves to it, while supporters who did not want to risk arrest were moved across the broad street. Some of the demonstrators stood in the snow and freezing temperatures for nearly four hours before being taken to Anacostia processing center and released. All have been released. Some have elected to pay a fine, while others, including Ellsberg and McGovern, will go to trial on the charge of disobeying a lawful order. Police spent several hours making the arrests and taking photos of each one of the demonstrators before placing them in a van.
Read the rest of the story

(Photo source: http://www.stopthesewars.org/ )

Does WikiLeaks endanger lives?

2010-12-17T16:09:00.000-08:00

"Let the eye of vigilance never be closed."

~Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, attacked WikiLeaks over U.S. embassy cables, claiming the publication of private diplomatic communications represents an attack on the fabric of "responsible government" and "it puts people's lives in danger". A White House spokesman also said that the stealing and dissemination of classified information is illegal and the Obama administration is considering legal action against WikiLeaks.

Let us briefly consider the aforementioned claims, the last one first. As far as I can determine from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Daniel Ellsburg case, WikiLeaks has done nothing illegal by merely disseminating U.S. documents sent to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks had no part in the theft of those documents. That is why the Obama administration is still considering legal action against WikiLeaks. Any new laws would not apply to WikiLeaks due to the illegality of ex post facto laws. The government's problem and contacts with Wikileaks pre-dates any newly created laws.

That being the case, in the Ellsburg matter Supreme Court Justice Stewart’s opinion, joined by White, set the standard for what the Supreme Court would support for national security-based restrictions on press freedom: disclosure must “surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable harm to our Nation, or its people.”

Stewart wrote: “We are asked, quite simply, to prevent the publication by two newspapers of material that the Executive Branch insists should not, in the national interest, be published. I am convinced that the Executive is correct with respect to some of the documents involved. But I cannot say that disclosure of any of them will surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable harm to our Nation, or its people. That being so, there can under the First Amendment be but one judicial resolution of the issues before us.”

Justice Stewart also said: “In the absence of the governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry – in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government.”

Stewart described Executive power over internal security as “an awesome responsibility, requiring judgment and wisdom of a high order. I should suppose that moral, political, and practical considerations would dictate that a very first principle of that wisdom would be an insistence upon avoiding secrecy for its own sake. For when everything is classified, then nothing is classified, and the system becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the careless, and to be manipulated by those intent on self protection or self-promotion. I should suppose, in short, that the hallmark of a truly effective internal security system would be the maximum possible disclosure, recognizing that secrecy can best be preserved only when credibility is truly maintained.” (See all opinions, New York Times Co. v United States)

Hillary Clinton's claim to responsible government begs the question. If Clinton and the U.S. government took seriously the Constitution and international humanitarian law, then her remark would not appear so laughable. Clinton is an example of the kind of duplicitous politician who is responsible for the stark absence of credibility in the federal govenrment.

The accusation that WikiLeaks is endangering lives is so far answered by the fact there is no evidence to support to claim. Nonetheless, government officials repeat the "endangering lives" accusation ad nauseam. (See the BBC report Has release of Wikileaks documents cost lives?)

The accusation of "endangering lives" should be directed, rather, to the federal government. Inarguably, U.S. interventionist foreign "policy" is what endangers lives. It is a policy, if one can call it such, that runs roughshod over the Constitution and human rights. The WikiLeaks' disclosures leave no doubt as to where the real problem lies.

If the U.S. government did not recklessly endanger lives, and conducted its affairs in a manner befitting a "responsible government", then it would have little to fear from WikiLeaks. The disclosures with have hardly gained public attention. Alas, this not the case.

The Empire will, as it must, persecute the whistleblower who revealed so many of its dirty little secrets. The following video examines the U.S. miltary's practice of turning prisoners over to the Iraqi government to be tortured. This is just one of countless atrocities that gives the lie to Hillary's claim that the federal government is a "responsible government."

See next, Wikileaks Iraq: data journalism maps every death

For myself, the data journalism maps call to mind General Tommy Franks bald-faced lie: "We don't do body counts", and George Bush's ludicrous statement: "Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. That’s for certain. He was in power, and now he is not. And therefore, the Iraqi people’s lives will be much better off."

Bush also said, "I’ve always said democracy is going to be hard. It’s not easy to go from being enslaved to being free. But it’s going to happen, because the basic instincts of mankind is to be free. They want to be free." So many Iraqis murdered -- that is an awfully strange way to spread democracy.

There is an inherent contradiction in the attempt to bring democracy to a country by totalitarian means. These means have done incalculably more harm to the Iraqi people than Saddam ever dreamed of doing, or was even capable of doing.

Despite Bush's publicly stated reasons for unleashing war on Iraq, which were mere pretext, we know the neoconservatives real reasons for the invasion and occupation.

Assange's next project

2010-12-17T15:05:00.001-08:00

Julian Assange to Launch Social Network for Diplomats, Twofacebook

WikiLeaks Founder Plans ‘Portal of Deceit’

LONDON (The Borowitz Report) – Moments after being released on bail, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was already making plans for his next venture, a social network for diplomats called Twofacebook.

Mr. Assange said he came up with the idea for the new site while combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of WikiLeaks documents: “I realized that diplomats didn’t have a way to reconnect with old colleagues so they could lie to them.”

Saying that he hopes to build the site into a “portal of deceit,” Mr. Assange said, “This will be a must-visit destination on the Internet for sworn enemies to friend each other.”

The WikiLeaks founder said that Twofacebook would also enable members of the diplomatic community to share information about music, movies and TV shows “that they say they like but actually detest.”

Additionally, he said he had high hopes for the site’s first online game, Harmville, in which diplomats can kill or maim each other’s sheep.

Ron Paul: Lying is Not Patriotic (text)

2010-12-15T08:09:00.000-08:00

This is the text of Congressman Ron Paul's speech before the House of Representatives.

WikiLeaks’ release of classified information has generated a lot of attention world-wide in the past few weeks.

The hysterical reaction makes one wonder if this is not an example of killing the messenger for the bad news.

Despite what is claimed, information so far released, though classified, has caused no known harm to any individual, but it has caused plenty of embarrassment to our government. Losing a grip on our empire is not welcomed by the neo-conservatives in charge.

There is now more information confirming that Saudi Arabia is a principle supporter and financier of Al Qaeda and this should set off alarm bells since we guarantee its Sharia-run government.

This emphasizes even more the fact that no Al Qaeda existed in Iraq before 9/11, and yet we went to war against Iraq based on the lie that it did.

It has been charged, by self-proclaimed experts, that Julian Assange, the internet publisher of this information, has committed a heinous crime deserving prosecution for treason and execution or even assassination.

But should we not at least ask how the U.S. government can charge an Australian citizen with treason for publishing U.S. secret information, that he did not steal?

And if WikiLeaks is to be prosecuted for publishing classified documents, why shouldn’t the Washington Post, New York Times, and others that have also published these documents be prosecuted? Actually, some in Congress are threatening this as well.

The New York Times, as a result of a Supreme Court ruling, was not found guilty in 1971 for the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg never served a day in prison for his role in obtaining these secret documents.

The Pentagon Papers were also inserted into the Congressional Record by Senator Mike Gravel with no charges being made of breaking any National Security laws.

Yet the release of this classified information was considered illegal by many, and those who lied us into the Vietnam War and argued for its prolongation were outraged. But the truth gained from the Pentagon Papers revealed that lies were told about the Gulf of Tonkin attack which perpetuated a sad and tragic episode in our history.

Just as with the Vietnam War, the Iraq War was based on lies. We were never threatened by Weapons of Mass Destruction or Al Qaeda in Iraq, though the attack on Iraq was based on this false information.

Any information that challenges the official propaganda for the war in the Middle East is unwelcome by the administration and supporters of these unnecessary wars. Few are interested in understanding the relationship of our foreign policy and our presence in the Middle East to the threat of terrorism. Revealing the real nature and goal for our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.

Questions to consider:

1. Do the American people deserve to know the truth regarding the ongoing war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

2. Could a larger question be: how can an Army Private gain access to so much secret material?

3. Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not our government’s failure to protect classified information?

4. Are we getting our money’s worth from the $80 billion per year we spend on our intelligence agencies?

5. Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths; lying us into war, or WikiLeaks’ revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

6. If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information, that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the First Amendment and the independence of the internet?

7. Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on WikiLeaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?

8. Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in the time of a declared war – which is treason – and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death, and corruption?

9. Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it’s wrong?

Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised: “Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.”

December 11, 2010

Ron Paul: Lying is Not Patriotic (video)

2010-12-10T03:24:00.000-08:00

What your tax dollars buy

2010-12-08T12:02:00.000-08:00

You probably never suspected your tax dollars help pay for drugs, bacha bazi parties and pimping of Afghan boys.

WikiLeaks: Texas Company Helped Pimp Little Boys To Stoned Afghan Cops

Another international conflict, another horrific taxpayer-funded sex scandal for DynCorp, the private security contractor tasked with training the Afghan police.

While the company is officially based in the DC area, most of its business is managed on a satellite campus at Alliance Airport north of Fort Worth. And if one of the diplomatic cables from the WikiLeaks archive is to be believed, boy howdy, are their doings in Afghanistan shady.

The Afghanistan cable (dated June 24, 2009) discusses a meeting between Afghan Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and US assistant ambassador Joseph Mussomeli. Prime among Atmar's concerns was a party partially thrown by DynCorp for Afghan police recruits in Kunduz Province.

Many of DynCorp's employees are ex-Green Berets and veterans of other elite units, and the company was commissioned by the US government to provide training for the Afghani police. According to most reports, over 95 percent of its $2 billion annual revenue comes from US taxpayers.

And in Kunduz province, according to the leaked cable, that money was flowing to drug dealers and pimps. Pimps of children, to be more precise. (The exact type of drug was never specified.)

Since this is Afghanistan, you probably already knew this wasn't a kegger. Instead, this DynCorp soiree was a bacha bazi ("boy-play") party, much like the ones uncovered earlier this year by Frontline...

Read rest of this story

Assange - The Truth Will Always Win

2010-12-07T22:18:00.000-08:00

The Truth Will Always Win
by Julian Assange

In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: “In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.”

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch’s expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain ‘s The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be “taken out” by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be “hunted down like Osama bin Laden”, a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a “transnational threat” and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister’s office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.

We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn’t want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.

Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: “You’ll risk lives! National security! You’ll endanger troops!” Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can’t be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US , with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn’t find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

* The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.

* King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran ‘s nuclear program stopped by any means available.

* Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect “US interests”.

* Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.

* The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay . Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”. The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

On WikiLeaks

2010-12-03T21:40:00.000-08:00

The original site for WikiLeaks, wikileaks.org, appears to be blocked. Here is the latest URL for WikiLeaks: http://213.251.145.96/

For full coverage of WikiLeaks, see the guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-us-embassy-cables

Western Civilization Has Shed Its Values

Reporters Without Borders Defends WikiLeaks

Why WikiLeaks Is Good for America

From WL Central, and unofficial WikiLeaks source:
Cablegate: Journalists in defence of WikiLeaks: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3

While some of his colleagues are calling for Julian Assange to be prosecuted as a terrorist or assassinated, in an interview on Fox News' Freedom Watch on Thursday, Republican Rep. Ron Paul said that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks should get the same kind of protections as the mainstream media when it comes to releasing information.

"In a free society we're supposed to know the truth," Paul said, quoted by Politico. "In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it."

"This whole notion that Assange, who's an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason. I mean, aren't they jumping to a wild conclusion?” he added. “This is media, isn't it? I mean, why don't we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?"

"What we need is more WikiLeaks about the Federal Reserve," he added. "Can you imagine what it'd be like if we had every conversation in the last 10 years with our Federal Reserve people, the Federal Reserve chairman, with all the central bankers of the world and every agreement or quid-pro-quo they have? It would be massive. People would be so outraged."

In a Twitter post on Friday, Ron Paul wrote: "Re: WikiLeaks — In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble."

Additional links:
The Wikileaks sex files: How two one-night stands sparked a worldwide hunt for Julian Assange
Cablegate Leaks
WikiLeaks mirrors
AG Holder Announces Action Against ‘Arrogant’ WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks release: WikiLeaks to release three million secret US documents

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange 'will release poison pill of damaging secrets if killed or arrested

The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange
WikiLeaks and the sham of "public diplomacy"
Rep. Ron Paul Makes Special Request Of Wikileaks on Fox’s Freedom Watch
Wikileaks Revelations
Who Will Be TIME's 2010 Person of the Year?

National biometric ID cards - a costly and dangerous scheme

2010-12-01T03:32:00.000-08:00

I should preface this discussion by saying that I do not like politics. I love political philosophy, though, but the current state of political affairs reveal that nothing is more immediately necessary, yet so starkly lacking in most politicians, than is a sound philosophy of government. The radical ideologies of many public officials, both elected and nonelected (e.g. the Federal Reserve Board), have steadily undermined constitutional government and made shipwreck of the U.S. economy. One of the latest political schemes, the national biometric identification card, is a statist threat to every American, one that compels me to address the problem.

I will first present a few ideas on the costs involved with national identification cards. Next, I will describe the threat national biometric ID cards pose to personal and constitutional liberties.

During March of this year, Senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) met with President Obama and discussed their plan for requiring biometric national ID cards. Obama, expressed his support of the new law, and later announced, "I . . . pledge to do everything in my power to forge a bipartisan consensus on this important issue so we can continue to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform."

The senators claim national identification cards are what the government needs to overhaul the immigration law; that national ID cards will "ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs," and will "dramatically decrease illegal immigration."

[Requires that within 2 years, only fraud-resistant, tamper-resistant, and wear-resistant Social Security cards will be issued. Within one year, the DHS must issue only machine readable, tamper-resistant employment authorization documents that use biometric identifiers.]

That national biometric ID cards “are needed” is specious. The argument implies lawmakers are incapable of reforming immigration law without the Schumer-Graham ID scheme. The next statement, that national ID cards will "ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs", is an overblown claim. At best, it will limit illegal workers to the kinds of employers they work for, employers who do not use standard payroll methods or check a worker’s identification. Thus, one unintended effect of national ID cards may be a surge in the underground economy.

Nonproductive costs

We should ask at what cost national identification cards are to American citizens and employers. Seldom do the statists in Washington give an accurate accounting of the costs involved with their radical innovations. How rare it is for them to ask how we are going to pay for this or that swell idea. It matters little to the radical innovators that the U.S. government debt exceeds $13 trillion and has been growing at the average rate of $4.13 billion each since September 28, 2007.

Rather than spending more money on new programs, as if government programs could fix the economy, the federal government should be liquidating its debt. But fiscal responsibility is nowhere to found in the short deck of cards played by Congress and the president. So, we continue to count the costs.

Count the time involved for citizens, illegal workers and government employees just for the scanning alone. This will entail a nightmare of many millions of people standing in long lines at the DMV and Social Security offices. While there is no requirement for an initial re-certification of the entire work force, new hires must be processed.

If the law passes, it will require employers to verify a worker’s identity: “An improved tamper-proof Social Security card would let employers verify that holders' identity and that they are authorized to work in the United States, based on a machine reader that would confirm an individual's fingerprints or eye scan,” the senators told the Washington Post.

Employers will need to buy scanning machines, which may cost from $800 - $1,000. The amount is a nonproductive expense for businesses. Small businesses that cannot afford the expense will have to send new hires to the DMV for scanning.

What will be the enforcement costs to ensure employers comply with the new law? Whatever the case may be, we can continue to almost no end considering nonproductive costs, but apart from such economic considerations, the national identification card entails much greater problems.

The national biometric ID card scheme is a slippery slope. It makes smooth the path to the eventual and total loss of everyone’s individual freedom. National ID cards are every statist’s wet dream.

Loss of freedom

As previously stated, a national ID scheme, complete with biometric tracking technology, is embedded in the new “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill” being pushed by Senators Graham and Schumer, and other statists in both major parties.

The following statements on the national ID card scheme are excerpted from a newsletter by John F. Tate, President of Campaign for Liberty.

[I]f passed, the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill” would require a new National ID card that would:

*** Include biometric identification information, such as fingerprints, retinal scans or scans of veins on the back of hands. Depending on the technology used, the ID card could easily be used as a tracking device;

*** Be required for all U.S. workers regardless of place of birth, and make it illegal for anyone to hold a job in the United States who doesn't obtain the ID card;

*** Require all employers to purchase an “ID scanner” to verify the ID cards with the federal government. Every time any citizen applies for a job, the government would know -- and you can bet it’s only a matter of time until “ID scans” will be required to make even routine purchases, as well.

Of course, the most dangerous part of the bill is the biometric tracking technology which would allow federal bureaucrats to track our every move. Allowing our government to have this much “prying power” in our lives will ultimately result in the TOTAL loss of freedom. This is exactly the type of battle that often decides whether a country remains free, or continues down a slide toward tyranny.

Government goon squads with all our personal information -- information they do not need and constitutionally should not have -- is a recipe for disaster for our nation.

You see, once “well-meaning” government bureaucrats know exactly how we live our lives, it won’t be long until they try to run them. In fact, it will only be a matter of time until they spend their workdays making sure you and I don’t go anywhere we “shouldn’t,” buy anything we “shouldn’t,” read anything we “shouldn’t,” eat anything we “shouldn’t” or smoke anything we “shouldn’t.”

You see, this fight isn’t really about immigration. Whatever you think of that fight, it’s simply being used as cover.

[T]he statists are trying a bipartisan “backdoor” scheme to impose more control on American citizens. They’re hoping that after months of Big Media mouthpieces decrying the “poisonous and partisan politics” in Washington, the American people will jump for joy at the sight of a Democrat from liberal New York and a Republican from conservative South Carolina “working together to solve our immigration mess.”

After all, liberty activists can hardly find two Senators with bigger vendettas against the liberty movement than Senator Chuck Schumer and Senator Lindsey Graham.

Senator Graham himself has very publicly denounced the limited government REVOLUTION launched by Dr. Ron Paul. He’s stated that we’re not welcome in HIS party. And now, he’s proving why the one who should not be welcome in any party that values freedom is LINDSEY GRAHAM.

There is already a strong, “bipartisan coalition” developing, and the American people barely know what’s going on.

Imminent Threat

2010-11-29T03:26:00.000-08:00

"In friendship false, implacable in hate

Resolved to ruin or to rule the state."

~ Dryden

Why does the federal government want to take over the food industry? S. 510 Food Safety Modernization Act has been called one of the most dangerous pieces of food legislation in the history of the U.S. This bill is now coming to a vote the evening of Monday, November 29, 2010.

Listen to this brief presentation from Natural News: Urgent call to action on Senate Bill 510 Food Safety Modernization Act

Also, GovTrack Insider reporter Patrick Tutwiler interviews Liz Reitzig, the Secretary of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, about S. 510. Transcript:

Congress is likely to pick up S. 510, a sweeping overhaul of food safety regulation, in the lame duck session starting in November 2010. Many small farming groups and organic food enthusiasts are worried about the effect the bill could have on the local and small farm production chain.

Liz Reitzig is Secretary of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association.

Reitzig: Senate bill S. 510 is completely flawed.

Question from GovTrack.us Users: Will this bill prevent me from having a home garden, sharing produce with my friends, or disrupt in any way my local farmer’s market?

Reitzig: What Senate bill S. 510 does it is creates statutory authority for the FDA to come up with regulations governing all aspects of food production and processing. So whether or not it will affect a home garden or a farmer’s market, we probably won’t see anything immediately affecting those, but once they come up with the regulations and start enforcing we could see a disruption in anything, anything from a farmer’s market to a child’s lemonade stand.

Because nothing is explicitly exempted, so they are all implicitly included. So the regulations could very easily include regulations such that they impose overburdensome restrictions on farmers going to market.

GovTrack Insider: But surely it wasn’t the intent of the lawmakers to disrupt gardens or lemonade stands.

Reitzig: Well I think the intent of the legislation is to give much broader authority to the FDA, and then when you look at the language of the bill, when it gives the authority to the FDA to act on “reason to believe”, that’s giving a lot of power, a lot of control, to one person.

An example of that is there is a thriving and booming fresh milk movement, people who want fresh milk directly from farmers they know and trust. Well the FDA, CDC, and other organizations have clearly said they don’t think anybody should drink fresh milk. If you go by that, they would have reason to believe fresh milk might make somebody sick, and on that basis they could just shut down every fresh milk farmer, everybody who is supplying fresh milk to a consumer because they have that reason to believe.

Even if the intent is not explicitly stated as control over all farms, that is what is this legislation and they can use that to impose their world view on everyone.

S. 510 does exempt small farmers and restaurants from some of the FDA’s proposed new regulatory authority. However, the scope of the final regulations will not be known until the law is enacted and the FDA completes the rule-making process.

Reitzig: It’s like writing a blank check to the FDA and saying now come up with the regulations. Once the bill is passed they can come up with whatever regulations they want. Again for them to say we’re going to have regulations specifically for smaller producers, they don’t yet have the regulations so how do we know what they are going to come up with? How do we know if it actually is going to benefit small producers or not? We don’t know, it’s this big unknown. And it’s this big blank check to the FDA who has already been stepping on small farms a lot.

Freedom on the wane

2010-11-29T02:32:00.000-08:00

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H.L. Mencken

America’s march toward statism continues for the most part unimpeded during the Obama Administration. Obamacare should come to mind as a statist takeover of the healthcare industry, yet not many people understand what is in the so-called health care bill. Fortunately, a U.S. Army translator who speaks "Washington Doublespeak" decoded the bill and posted his plain-language findings at FreeRepublic.com. One may not agree with every interpretation listed, or that every provision is necessarily bad, but one should find many of these Little gems from the Health Care Bill somewhat frightening. And “yes”, a government rationing panel, not doctors, will determine your level of health care.

What will the feds take over next? Last week, the federal government began seizing websites in clear violation of First Amendment rights and Due Process. The Department of Homeland Security based its seizures on wording in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). However, the seizures go beyond the intent of the law, which is to protect the property rights of the music recording industry.

Natural News says, “As part of a new expansion of government power over information, the Department of Homeland Security has begun seizing and shutting down internet websites (web domains) without due process or a proper trial. DHS simply seizes web domains that it wants to and posts an ominous "Department of Justice" logo on the web site. See an example at http://torrent-finder.com/

"Over 75 websites were seized and shut down last week, and there is no indication that the government will stop such efforts. Right now, their focus is websites that they claim "violate copyrights," yet the torrent-finder.com website that was seized by DHS contained no copyrighted content whatsoever. It was merely a search engine website that linked to destinations where people could access copyrighted content. Google also links to copyrighted content -- does that mean the feds will soon seize Google, too?

"These seizures were conducted on the basis of language in the DMCA law, which is vastly overreaching in its powers (it was passed to appease the music recording industry and the RIAA). Even so, the U.S. Senate is right now considering passing yet another law -- COICA -- the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/...), a new law that would give the federal government even more power to shut down websites it opposed.”

Here is the list of 19 Senators who voted power to the federal government to censor the Internet under the COICA bill:
• Patrick J. Leahy -- Vermont
• Herb Kohl -- Wisconsin
• Jeff Sessions -- Alabama
• Dianne Feinstein -- California
• Orrin G. Hatch -- Utah
• Russ Feingold -- Wisconsin
• Chuck Grassley -- Iowa
• Arlen Specter -- Pennsylvania
• Jon Kyl -- Arizona
• Chuck Schumer -- New York
• Lindsey Graham -- South Carolina
• Dick Durbin -- Illinois
• John Cornyn -- Texas
• Benjamin L. Cardin -- Maryland
• Tom Coburn -- Oklahoma
• Sheldon Whitehouse -- Rhode Island
• Amy Klobuchar -- Minnesota
• Al Franken -- Minnesota
• Chris Coons – Delaware

The broad, open-ended nature of COICA is license for the federal government to a virtually unchecked expansion of its control over internet domains. The real potential now exists for government control of free speech online. Patrick Leahy, who introduced the bill, along with his fascist followers in the Senate, should have their names listed in a Statist Hall of Shame.

Read more about COICA:
http://www.usa-anti-communist.com/w

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris…

Cute graphic...

Laughing as you sink!

2010-11-23T04:09:00.000-08:00

Two comedians try to understand the global financial crisis
I thought this two-minute video was hilarious! More about economics and the Fed, soon.

My thoughts on Joe Sobran

2010-11-22T17:37:00.000-08:00

Catholic, conservative columnist and moralist extraordinaire, Joe Sobran, died last September. Perhaps I am a bit slow because it is just now that I am starting to recall how much I was influenced by Sobran's writing.

For many years I had no interest whatsoever in keeping up with politics, especially nationally, as it all appeared Machiavellian and otherwise disordered in a myriad of ways. Yet, there were changes; I am not referring to the nature of politics in D.C., but to the fact I developed an interest in practical politics and political philosophy.

I gained an interest in politics from reading of Joe Sobran’s Washington Watch column in The Wanderer (archived here). I found Sobran to be eloquent and knowledgeable about politics, ethical and social issues, and people in general. Sobran’s Washington Watch columns taught me how and what to think about politics and social problems, and they were an inspiration to significantly enlarge my understanding. With this motivation to learn, I continue to study America’s founding era, founding documents, pro-life issues, philosophy of government and political economy.

Sobran’s career in journalism was far from always being pleasant. Arrogant individuals falsely accused him of anti-Semitism. Yet Sobran kept his sense of dignity and charity. What distinguished Sobran from his detractors was his genuine goodwill. Goodwill is that indispensible trait that makes one truly human. Alas, present-day American society suffers from a shortage of goodwill.

Sobran’s political views changed over time. I did not agree with everything he wrote, specifically, his later support of anarcho-libertarianism. However, I could sympathize with his arguments against the state without accepting certain conclusions he drew from them. Nonetheless, it is difficult to find a home in modern politics when the conservative movement has degenerated into statism, Zionism and war-mongering. Sobran was morally, politically and economically right to denounce the welfare-warfare state.

The evils of modern government appear more clearly to a guileless spirit like Sobran. Sobran’s incisive criticisms of the Gulf War revealed his faithfulness to a correct understanding and application of traditional just war doctrine. Sobran’s anti-war stance was a breath of fresh air amid the throng of Catholic scholars whose fall from grace involved their active support for the corrupt political thinking of the times rather than the timeless thinking of the Church.

Sobran’s anti-war arguments reflect the consistent application of genuine pro-life ethics. Catholics, on the other hand, who are anti-abortion (as they should be) are profoundly inconsistent in their pro-life views by supporting unjust wars, all pro-Gulf War rationale notwithstanding.

Sobran’s journalism remains available online at Sobran’s. I always find it refreshing to drop in on the site and read more columns.

Fr. Stanley L. Jaki Obituary

2010-11-16T01:49:00.000-08:00

From The Times (London) April 22, 2009

Father Stanley Jaki: Benedictine priest, physicist and theologianStanley Jaki, a Benedictine priest and a physicist, was best known for his scholarly contributions to the philosophy of science and theology. In 1987 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for his work on analysing “the importance of differences as well as similarities between science and religion, adding significant, balanced enlightenment to the field”.

The £1 million annual prize, established in 1972 by the philanthropistentrepreneur Sir John Templeton, is awarded to a person who “has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works”, and previous winners include Mother Teresa and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Stanley Ladislas Jaki was born in Gyor, Hungary, in 1924. He attended the Jedlik Preparatory School and Junior College in Gyor and, in 1942, entered the Benedictine Order, living in the St Martin’s Archabbey in Pannonhalma, Hungary. His brothers Zeno and Theodose Jaki, both Benedictine priests, still live at the abbey.

Completing his undergraduate training in philosophy, theology and mathematics in 1947, he went to the Pontifical Institute of San Anselmo, Rome, where, in 1950, he received a doctorate in theology. He had been ordained in 1948.

In 1951 he joined the School of Theology of St Vincent College, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, as a teacher of systematic theology. At the same time he took courses in mathematics and sciences, US history, and literature to obtain US recognition of the undergraduate courses that he did in Hungary. In 1954 he received his bachelor’s degree from St Vincent College.

He lost his voice after an operation to remove his tonsils and would not get it back for a number of years. This forced him to give up teaching and he went to Fordham University (the Jesuit University of New York) to do research in physics for a PhD, supervised by Victor Hess, the Nobel laureate who, with Carl David Anderson, discovered cosmic rays. His thesis, published in June 1958, was entitled A Study of the Distribution of Radon, Thoron and their Decay Products Above and Below the Ground.

In 1958-60 he conducted research in the history and philosophy of physics at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. He then went to Princeton as a visiting fellow in the history and philosophy of science. In 1962-65 he wrote the The Relevance of Physics, an important historical analysis of the limitations of the scientific method within physics and within philosophy and theology.

In 1965 he obtained a post at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. During the academic year 1966-67 he was associated with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. In 1975 he was appointed Distinguished University Professor at Seton Hall University.

Jaki was a co-founder, with six other Hungarian priests, of the Woodside Priory, Portola Valley, California, where he served as bookkeeper, 1957-60. He left the priory when it merged with one in New Hampshire.Jaki strongly believed in the conjunction between faith and reason and argued that science flourished in Europe because of the Christian understanding of creation and the Incarnation. But he cannot be called a creationist in total agreement with fundamentalists who strictly adhere to the Bible, especially the story in Genesis.

In an interview with The New York Times he said: “I believe there is a basic misunderstanding which has existed for hundreds of years and will continue to persist about the ‘creationist problem’ because in intellectual life we do not solve such dilemmas to the satisfaction of everybody.” In his opinion religion and science were compatible and reinforced each other.

Jaki received numerous honours. He gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1974-75 and 1975-76 — one of the highest honours in Scottish academia; his lectures were published as The Road of Science and the Ways of God.Jaki was a prolific author, publishing more than 40 books, hundreds of articles, reviews, chapters and lectures. His books, many of them analysing the relationships between modern science and orthodox Christianity, reflect the extraordinary range of his interests and his exceptional abilities. Among them are: The Relevance of Physics (1966); Brain, Mind and Computers (1969); The Milky Way: an Elusive Road for Science (1973); Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (1974); Miracles and Physics (1989); God and the Cosmologists (1989); and Bible and Science (1996).

In addition, he wrotes studies of G. K. Chesterton, Pierre Duhem, the French mathematician, physicist and historian of science, and Cardinal Newman, and he translated some important works, including the first English version of a study of Copernicus (1975) and Immanuel Kant’s Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1775/1981).

In addition to numerous honorary doctorates, scholarly prizes and memberships of learned societies in many countries, Jaki lectured widely and participated in seminars and conferences all over the world. He was awarded the Lecomte du Nouy Prize and Medal (1970), and the Széchenyi Medal of the Széchenyi Társaság (Hungary, 1997).

For all his immense recognition in scholarly circles, Jaki’s groundbreaking work on science, philosophy, ethics, religion and culture has undoubtedly had a considerable influence and relevance that have yet to be adequately recognised.

Father Stanley Jaki, priest, physicist, theologian and scholar, was born on August 17, 1924. He died on April 7, 2009, aged 84

+++

Books by Stanley L. Jaki at Amazon:Books by Fr. Jaki at Amazon:

Patterns or Principles and Other Essays

Scientist and Catholic: Pierre Duhem

Miracles and Physics

And on This Rock: The Witness of One Land and Two Covenants

More books by Jaki at Real View Books

+++

Books by Jaki:

1966. The Relevance of Physics. University of Chicago Press.

1969. Brain, Mind and Computers. Herder & Herder.

1969. The Paradox of Olbers' Paradox. Herder & Herder.
1973. The Milky Way: an Elusive Road for Science. New York: Science History Publications.
1974. Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.
1978. Planets and Planetarians. A History of Theories of the Origin of Planetary Systems. John Wiley & Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.
1978. The Road of Science and the Ways to God. Univ. of Chicago Press, and Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. ISBN 0-226-39145-0
1978. The Origin of Science and the Science of its Origins. Scottish Academic Press.
1980. Cosmos and Creator. Scottish Academic Press. ISBN 0-7073-0285-4
1983. Angels, Apes and Men. La Salle IL: Sherwood, Sugden & Co. ISBN 0-89385-017-9
1984. Uneasy Genius. The Life and Work of Pierre Duhem. The Hague: Nyhoff.
1986. Chesterton, a Seer of Science. University of Illinois Press.
1986. Lord Gifford and His Lectures. A Centenary Retrospective. Edinburgh: Scottish Academis Press, and Macon, GA.: Mercer University Press.
1986. Chance or Reality and Other Essays. Lanham, MD: University Press of America & Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
1988. The Absolute Beneath the Relative and Other Essays. Lanham, MD: University Press of America & Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
2000 (1988). The Savior of Science. W. B. Eerdmans. ISBN 0-8028-4772-2
(Source: Wikipedia)

+++

See also, Stanley L. Jaki: Commemorations of his life and works

Veterans Day

2010-11-11T06:53:00.000-08:00

"There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war'." ~Cardinal Ratzinger

I never get excited about or even interested in Veterans Day. Why? It is not because I harbor any ill-will towards vets. It is because I consider most wars to have been morally unjustified. So, why would I be thankful for those who fought in unjust wars?

I don't know how many Americans think the way I do on this subject, but I came across an article titled Thank a Vet? by Laurence M. Vance, that I can relate to:

"We’ve all seen the bumper stickers: "My son is in the Air Force," "If You Can Read This in English, Thank a Marine," "Proud Vietnam Veteran," "Fly Navy," and of course, "Thank a Vet."

"Why should we?

"Why should we call them heroes, give them military discounts, grant them veterans preference, express our support for them with ribbons on our cars, honor them with a holiday, hold military appreciation church services for them, and thank them for their "service"?

"Veterans Day began as Armistice Day to commemorate the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. It had nothing to do with honoring current and former members of the military like Veterans Day is celebrated today. And if the sole purpose of Armistice Day was to honor World War I veterans, it should never have been celebrated since no American soldier did anything honorable by intervening in a European foreign war. And it doesn’t matter if he was drafted or not." (Continue reading this article)

There are veterans that I do respect, the ones who have good reasons for opposing the war in Iraq. Visit Iraq Veterans Against the War

Remember on this Veterans Day, "War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." - John F. Kennedy

Watch:
The Troops Are Waking Up - Mike Prysner on the War of Terror: 'The real terrorist was me!'

Universal Soldier by Donovan

Ilario Pantano unfit for politics

2010-10-26T23:57:00.000-07:00

Tea Party backing candidate who allegedly shot unarmed Iraqis 60 times
By Eric W. Dolan
October 26th, 2010
From The Raw Story

A Tea Party-backed candidate who allegedly murdered two unarmed Iraqis could win a seat in the House of Representatives, The Guardian reports.

Thirty-nine-year-old Ilario Pantano, who is running for North Carolina's 7th congressional district as a Republican, was charged with the premeditated murder of two Iraqi civilians in 2005 while serving as a second lieutenant with the US Marines.

In April of 2004, Pantano and his platoon stopped and detained two Iraqi men in a car near Falluja. While the majority of his platoon was away, he and two others ordered the detained Iraqis to search their own car for weapons and then allegedly unloaded two full magazines of his M16A4 rifle into them.

Sergeant Daniel Coburn, who was 27 at the time and one of the three soldiers at the incident, recalled wondering "when the lieutenant was going to stop, because it was obvious that they were dead."

"I believed that by firing the number of rounds that I did, I was sending a message," Pantano told the New York magazine.

Continue reading this article

Prenatal Child at 10 Weeks

2010-10-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

I came across this amazing photo on the Live Action website of a ten-week old prenatal child. The photo was by taken by an OB/GYN med student in India named Dr. Suparna Sinhasource and posted on flickr. (The photos on flickr can be enlarged for viewing.) So much for the pro-aborts' "blob of tissue" lies.

Reportedly, a 44yr old gravid female with 6 previous children, was diagnosed with carcinoma in situ of the cervix (early stage cancer of womb), hence a total removal of the uterus (womb) was considered with fetus in situ, for long life of the female.

Prop. 8 ruling

2010-08-18T23:37:00.000-07:00

Prop. 8 ruling ignores precedent, evidence and common sense

By Edwin Meese III
Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Even some who support same-sex marriage worry that, in striking down California's voter-approved proposition defining marriage as between one man and one woman, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker went too far. They are right -- and not the only ones who should be concerned. Walker's ruling is indefensible as a matter of law wholly apart from its result.

By refusing to acknowledge binding Supreme Court precedent, substantial evidence produced at trial that was contrary to the holding and plain common sense, the ruling exhibits none of the requirements of a traditional decision. This opinion is arbitrary and capricious, and its alarming legal methodology and overtly policy-driven tenor are too extreme to stand.

Regardless of whether one agrees with the result, structurally sound opinions always confront binding legal precedent. Walker's is a clear exception because the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken on whether a state's refusal to authorize same-sex marriage violates the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment. In 1972, Baker v. Nelson, a case over whether Minnesota violated the Constitution by issuing marriage licenses only to opposite-sex couples, was unanimously thrown out on the merits, for lack of a substantial federal question. The Supreme Court's action establishes a binding precedent in favor of Proposition 8. But Judge Walker's ruling doesn't mention Baker, much less attempt to distinguish it or accept its findings.

Read the rest of this article

CA Prop 8 Ruling Full Text

Why WikiLeaks Must Be Protected

2010-08-18T23:29:00.000-07:00

by John Pilger

On 26 July, Wikileaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. Wikileaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing for both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times are a fraction.

There is understandably hysteria on high, with demands that the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is "hunted down" and "rendered." In Washington, I interviewed a senior Defense Department official and asked, "Can you give a guarantee that the editors of Wikileaks and the editor in chief, who is not American, will not be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?" He replied, "It’s not my position to give guarantees on anything." He referred me to the "ongoing criminal investigation" of a US soldier, Bradley Manning, an alleged whistleblower. In a nation that claims its constitution protects truth-tellers, the Obama administration is pursuing and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any of its modern predecessors. A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to "fatally marginalize" Wikileaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.

Read the rest of this article

Vatican on Homosexual Marriage

2010-08-05T02:00:00.000-07:00

The Vatican on Homosexual Marriage
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH

CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITION TO UNIONS BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS

INTRODUCTION

1. In recent years, various questions relating to homosexuality have been addressed with some frequency by Pope John Paul II and by the relevant Dicasteries of the Holy See.(1) Homosexuality is a troubling moral and social phenomenon, even in those countries where it does not present significant legal issues. It gives rise to greater concern in those countries that have granted or intend to grant – legal recognition to homosexual unions, which may include the possibility of adopting children. The present Considerations do not contain new doctrinal elements; they seek rather to reiterate the essential points on this question and provide arguments drawn from reason which could be used by Bishops in preparing more specific interventions, appropriate to the different situations throughout the world, aimed at protecting and promoting the dignity of marriage, the foundation of the family, and the stability of society, of which this institution is a constitutive element. The present Considerations are also intended to give direction to Catholic politicians by indicating the approaches to proposed legislation in this area which would be consistent with Christian conscience.(2) Since this question relates to the natural moral law, the arguments that follow are addressed not only to those who believe in Christ, but to all persons committed to promoting and defending the common good of society.

I. THE NATURE OF MARRIAGE AND ITS INALIENABLE CHARACTERISTICS

2. The Church's teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose.(3) No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.

3. The natural truth about marriage was confirmed by the Revelation contained in the biblical accounts of creation, an expression also of the original human wisdom, in which the voice of nature itself is heard. There are three fundamental elements of the Creator's plan for marriage, as narrated in the Book of Genesis.

In the first place, man, the image of God, was created “male and female” (Gen 1:27). Men and women are equal as persons and complementary as male and female. Sexuality is something that pertains to the physical-biological realm and has also been raised to a new level – the personal level – where nature and spirit are united.

Marriage is instituted by the Creator as a form of life in which a communion of persons is realized involving the use of the sexual faculty. “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).

Third, God has willed to give the union of man and woman a special participation in his work of creation. Thus, he blessed the man and the woman with the words “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28). Therefore, in the Creator's plan, sexual complementarity and fruitfulness belong to the very nature of marriage.

Furthermore, the marital union of man and woman has been elevated by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament. The Church teaches that Christian marriage is an efficacious sign of the covenant between Christ and the Church (cf. Eph 5:32). This Christian meaning of marriage, far from diminishing the profoundly human value of the marital union between man and woman, confirms and strengthens it (cf. Mt 19:3-12; Mk 10:6-9).

4. There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts “close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved”.(4)

Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts “as a serious depravity... (cf. Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10). This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered”.(5) This same moral judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries(6) and is unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition.

Nonetheless, according to the teaching of the Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided”.(7) They are called, like other Christians, to live the virtue of chastity.(8) The homosexual inclination is however “objectively disordered”(9) and homosexual practices are “sins gravely contrary to chastity”.(10)

II. POSITIONS ON THE PROBLEM OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS

5. Faced with the fact of homosexual unions, civil authorities adopt different positions. At times they simply tolerate the phenomenon; at other times they advocate legal recognition of such unions, under the pretext of avoiding, with regard to certain rights, discrimination against persons who live with someone of the same sex. In other cases, they favour giving homosexual unions legal equivalence to marriage properly so-called, along with the legal possibility of adopting children.

Where the government's policy is de facto tolerance and there is no explicit legal recognition of homosexual unions, it is necessary to distinguish carefully the various aspects of the problem. Moral conscience requires that, in every occasion, Christians give witness to the whole moral truth, which is contradicted both by approval of homosexual acts and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons. Therefore, discreet and prudent actions can be effective; these might involve: unmasking the way in which such tolerance might be exploited or used in the service of ideology; stating clearly the immoral nature of these unions; reminding the government of the need to contain the phenomenon within certain limits so as to safeguard public morality and, above all, to avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.

In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.

III. ARGUMENTS FROM REASON AGAINST LEGAL RECOGNITION OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS

6. To understand why it is necessary to oppose legal recognition of homosexual unions, ethical considerations of different orders need to be taken into consideration.

From the order of right reason

The scope of the civil law is certainly more limited than that of the moral law,(11) but civil law cannot contradict right reason without losing its binding force on conscience.(12) Every humanly-created law is legitimate insofar as it is consistent with the natural moral law, recognized by right reason, and insofar as it respects the inalienable rights of every person.(13) Laws in favour of homosexual unions are contrary to right reason because they confer legal guarantees, analogous to those granted to marriage, to unions between persons of the same sex. Given the values at stake in this question, the State could not grant legal standing to such unions without failing in its duty to promote and defend marriage as an institution essential to the common good.

It might be asked how a law can be contrary to the common good if it does not impose any particular kind of behaviour, but simply gives legal recognition to a de facto reality which does not seem to cause injustice to anyone. In this area, one needs first to reflect on the difference between homosexual behaviour as a private phenomenon and the same behaviour as a relationship in society, foreseen and approved by the law, to the point where it becomes one of the institutions in the legal structure. This second phenomenon is not only more serious, but also assumes a more wide-reaching and profound influence, and would result in changes to the entire organization of society, contrary to the common good. Civil laws are structuring principles of man's life in society, for good or for ill. They “play a very important and sometimes decisive role in influencing patterns of thought and behaviour”.(14) Lifestyles and the underlying presuppositions these express not only externally shape the life of society, but also tend to modify the younger generation's perception and evaluation of forms of behaviour. Legal recognition of homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage.

From the biological and anthropological order

7. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involving a grave lack of respect for human dignity,(15) does nothing to alter this inadequacy.

Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.

As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.

From the social order

8. Society owes its continued survival to the family, founded on marriage. The inevitable consequence of legal recognition of homosexual unions would be the redefinition of marriage, which would become, in its legal status, an institution devoid of essential reference to factors linked to heterosexuality; for example, procreation and raising children. If, from the legal standpoint, marriage between a man and a woman were to be considered just one possible form of marriage, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical transformation, with grave detriment to the common good. By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and the family, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties.

The principles of respect and non-discrimination cannot be invoked to support legal recognition of homosexual unions. Differentiating between persons or refusing social recognition or benefits is unacceptable only when it is contrary to justice.(16) The denial of the social and legal status of marriage to forms of cohabitation that are not and cannot be marital is not opposed to justice; on the contrary, justice requires it.

Nor can the principle of the proper autonomy of the individual be reasonably invoked. It is one thing to maintain that individual citizens may freely engage in those activities that interest them and that this falls within the common civil right to freedom; it is something quite different to hold that activities which do not represent a significant or positive contribution to the development of the human person in society can receive specific and categorical legal recognition by the State. Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition. On the contrary, there are good reasons for holding that such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to increase.

From the legal order

9. Because married couples ensure the succession of generations and are therefore eminently within the public interest, civil law grants them institutional recognition. Homosexual unions, on the other hand, do not need specific attention from the legal standpoint since they do not exercise this function for the common good.

Nor is the argument valid according to which legal recognition of homosexual unions is necessary to avoid situations in which cohabiting homosexual persons, simply because they live together, might be deprived of real recognition of their rights as persons and citizens. In reality, they can always make use of the provisions of law – like all citizens from the standpoint of their private autonomy – to protect their rights in matters of common interest. It would be gravely unjust to sacrifice the common good and just laws on the family in order to protect personal goods that can and must be guaranteed in ways that do not harm the body of society.(17)

IV. POSITIONS OF CATHOLIC POLITICIANS WITH REGARD TO LEGISLATION IN FAVOUR OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS

10. If it is true that all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians. Faced with legislative proposals in favour of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are to take account of the following ethical indications.

When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral.

When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is already in force, the Catholic politician must oppose it in the ways that are possible for him and make his opposition known; it is his duty to witness to the truth. If it is not possible to repeal such a law completely, the Catholic politician, recalling the indications contained in the Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, “could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality”, on condition that his “absolute personal opposition” to such laws was clear and well known and that the danger of scandal was avoided.(18) This does not mean that a more restrictive law in this area could be considered just or even acceptable; rather, it is a question of the legitimate and dutiful attempt to obtain at least the partial repeal of an unjust law when its total abrogation is not possible at the moment.

CONCLUSION

11. The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.

The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, in the Audience of March 28, 2003, approved the present Considerations, adopted in the Ordinary Session of this Congregation, and ordered their publication.

Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 3, 2003, Memorial of Saint Charles Lwanga and his Companions, Martyrs.

Joseph Card. Ratzinger
Prefect

Angelo Amato, S.D.B.
Titular Archbishop of Sila
Secretary

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES

(1) Cf. John Paul II, Angelus Messages of February 20, 1994, and of June 19, 1994; Address to the Plenary Meeting of the Pontifical Council for the Family (March 24, 1999); Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 2357-2359, 2396; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Persona humana (December 29, 1975), 8; Letter on the pastoral care of homosexual persons (October 1, 1986); Some considerations concerning the response to legislative proposals on the non-discrimination of homosexual persons (July 24, 1992); Pontifical Council for the Family, Letter to the Presidents of the Bishops' Conferences of Europe on the resolution of the European Parliament regarding homosexual couples (March 25, 1994); Family, marriage and “de facto” unions (July 26, 2000), 23.

(2) Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the participation of Catholics in political life (November 24, 2002), 4.

(3) Cf. Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, 48.

(4) Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2357.

(5) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Persona humana (December 29, 1975), 8.

(6) Cf., for example, St. Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians, V, 3; St. Justin Martyr, First Apology, 27, 1-4; Athenagoras, Supplication for the Christians, 34.

(7) Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2358; cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter on the pastoral care of homosexual persons (October 1, 1986), 10.

(8) Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2359; cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter on the pastoral care of homosexual persons (October 1, 1986), 12.

(9) Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2358.

(10) Ibid., No. 2396.

(11) Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae (March 25, 1995), 71.

(12) Cf. ibid., 72.

(13) Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 95, a. 2.

(14) John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae (March 25, 1995), 90.

(15) Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Donum vitae (February 22, 1987), II. A. 1-3.

(16) Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 63, a.1, c.

(17) It should not be forgotten that there is always “a danger that legislation which would make homosexuality a basis for entitlements could actually encourage a person with a homosexual orientation to declare his homosexuality or even to seek a partner in order to exploit the provisions of the law” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Some considerations concerning the response to legislative proposals on the non-discrimination of homosexual persons [July 24, 1992], 14).

(18) John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae (March 25, 1995), 73.

Document source: Vatican